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THE EDWIN C. DINWIDDIE 

COLLECTION OF BOOKS ON 

TEMPERANCE AND ALLIED SUBJECTS 

(PRESENTED BY MRS. DINWIDDIE) 






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Quit Your Meanness. 



SERMONS AND SAYINGS 



OF" 



REV. SAM PJONES 



OF GEORGIA. 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 

BY w. m:. lektwich, d. d. 



0nl» ^niljovUeh Mnb&cvivHdn gbition. 



CRANSTON & STOWE, 

CINCINNATI, CHICAGO, ST. LOUIS. 

1886. 



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Copyright by 

CRANSTON & STO^ATE, 

1886. 






PREF ACB. 



T HAVE been gratified that, through stenographic 
^ reports of my sermons in the great daily news- 
papers at various points, I have been able to ad- 
dress a larger audience, by far, than could assemble 
in any hall or be reached by any human voice. I 
have always encouraged the press in giving the 
widest dissemination to what I believe to be truths 
worth uttering. But, when there came a demand 
for these discourses in the more permanent shape 
of a book, I naturally felt that the author should 
have the privilege of choosing his own publishers, 
and the right of final revision of such thoughts as 
were to be thus committed to the future. 

Few men, I imagine, would care to go into a 
book as reported in extemporaneous speech. To 
protect myself I have been compelled to copyright 
my sermons. I am not working for literary honor, 
^but whatever literary value there may be in my 
book is my own, and I will not consent to its being 
made a matter of speculation by thieves. I always 
did hate a thief, any way. 

Messrs. Cranston & Stowe, of Cincinnati, are 



IV Preface. 

the authorized publishers of my Cincinnati sermons, 
and of all others that may be published for sev- 
eral years. Of previous sermons the Southern 
Methodist Publishing House, of Nashville, Tenn., 
were the legitimate publishers. These houses will 
practice no extortion, but will sell the books as low 
as other books of corresponding quality, as to ma- 
terial and workmanship. As I have said before in 
a public card, I hope that no person will become a 
partaker in dishonesty by " dealing in stolen goods,'' 
and what is not stolen, if put out in my name, is 
counterfeit, save as above indicated. 



(^ 



Y2-^-7-1^ 




*%The sermons preached in Music Hall, Cincinnati, were 
stenographically reported by Mr. Ed. F. Flynn for the Cm- 
cinnati Commercial Gazette. His reports were unusually 
accurate, and have been largely used for this edition. 



INTRODUCTION 



NATURE, wearied of monotony, breaks up the sur- 
face of continents, here and there, by throwing up 
huge mountain ranges, ribbing them with rock and 
crowning them with snow. Thus climates are modified 
and the conditions of life are changed. So, in the history 
of the world, God, now and then, breaks the monotony 
of human life, by thrusting out extraordinary men, 
endued with power from on high, to modify the ordinary 
conditions of human life, and to influence the social 
sentiments and change the moral standards of gener- 
ations. The rarest gems are from the deepest depths ; 
the costliest jewels are from the roughest rocks ; and so, 
the highest forms of genius are in the crudest specimens 
of humanity. True genius stands aloof from men, dis- 
dains beaten paths, scorns common methods, follows no 
footsteps, but lives and moves and has its being in a 
world created by and for itself. Extraordinary genius 
given, extraordinary works follow. Extraordinary crises 
in the Church are always met by extraordinary men ; 
and these men have been, for the most part, taken from 
the common walks and conditions of life. 

It is a noteworthy fact, that the men who have 
moved the world into higher conditions of thought and 
life, have come from families and tribes of whom noth- 
ing was said concerning priesthood. Height and depth 
are relative terms, and the height to which men some- 
times rise can only be measured by the depths out of 
which they come. Many of the prophets were extraor- 
dinary men, and came from families of low degree. 

V 



VI Intkoduction. 

Yet, the history of the Church is the biography of 
extraordinary men. When God would call the Church 
back from apostasy, and lift it out of corruption and 
superstition, he raises up extraordinary men, endows 
them with genius, endues them with power from on 
High, and sends them out as a voice crying in the wil- 
derness, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his 
paths straight." Besides the prophets, apostles, and 
early martyrs, Wycklif, Huss, Luther, Calvin, Knox, 
and Wesley, are conspicuous illustrations. The coming 
of these men was preceded by signs and tokens that 
stirred the people and awakened general expectation of 
extraordinary movements and great changes in the con- 
dition of the Church, just as the kindling glow along 
the horizon and the gray streaks of dawn that shoot up 
in the heavens, give certain prophecy of the coming 
day. We may well believe that the eyes of the people 
were holden then that they could not read the signs of 
the times, just as our eyes seem to be holden now that 
we can not see the signs of these times, and our ears 
are heavy that we can not hear the voice crying, 
" Eepent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." 

Do we not hear the voice crying in the wilderness? 
What mean the extraordinary movements in the Church 
of to-day ? It becomes us to note with profound inter- 
est the work of lay-preachers and evangelists who are 
stirring the Church in the great centers, and to the 
farthest bounds. Who will dare say that this move- 
ment is not of God, and that the extraordinary men 
who are calling the Church to judgment and the world 
to repentance, are not called and commissioned of God 
for this very work. 

"But they are evangelists." Granted. Will any 
man say that evangelists are not divinely called and sent 



Introduction. vii 

to do the work of evangelists? ''But we do not want 
evangelists." That is a matter of small concern to the 
Head of the Church, who "gave some apostles and some 
prophets, and some evangelists, for the perfecting of the 
saints, and for the work of the ministry." " But we do 
not recognize evangelists as a distinct order in the min- 
istry." Suppose you do not. God has put the seal of 
his approval upon them, by working through them 
mightily to the pulling down of strongholds, and the saving 
of multiplied thousands that could not be reached by 
the stated pastors and local Churches. What are we 
that we should call in question God's wisdom, and repu- 
diate God's methods? Whatever we may say, evangel- 
ists have come to stay, and to be a recognized power in 
the Church in these last days, upon whom the Lord has 
laid his hand for a mighty work among the people. 
Whether the Head of the Church is using them to pre- 
pare the way for great changes in the conditions of his 
kingdom, and to bring in a new era in the history of 
the Church, we may not know. But we do know that 
men of special gifts and extraordinary power are leading 
the hosts of God from conquering to conquest, and moving 
the multitudes in the great centers of population as 
they have never been moved before during the present 
generation. The highest wisdom suggests the prayerful 
study of this wonderful movement in the Church of 
God, not for purposes of hypercriticism, but to discover 
the hand of God and be led by it into whatever con- 
ditions of life and methods of work he may be opening 
for his people. Those who cry out against irregularity 
and crudeness of speech should be silenced by the fact 
that the history of all great religious movements is re- 
peating itself both in the ground of objection and the 
character of objectors ; or they should be warned by the 



VIII Inteoduction. 

words of the great Apostle to the Gentiles — " Beware, 
therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of 
in the prophets : Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and 
perish; for I work a work in your days, a work 
which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare 
it unto you." 

The man who has passed the most rapidly to the 
front and become the most conspicuous figure in this 
religious movement, is the author of these sermons, the 
Revs Sam P. Jones, of Georgia. Other men engaged 
in evangelistic work have talent, aptitudes, consecration, 
power. Mr. Jones has genius superadded to all of these, 
and his wonderful genius is not only the subject of deep- 
est study in its intuitive knowledge of human nature, 
but, also, in its strange gift of power to move men as 
no other man can move men. 

W. M. L. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



THE REV. SAM P. JONES was bom in Chambers 
County, Ala., October 16, 1847, and was reared in 
Cartersville, Bartow County, Ga., where he still resides. 
He has a good ancestry. Like Timothy, the unfeigned 
faith that is in him dwelt in his grandmother and in his 
own mother ; and more, in his father and grandfather, 
and as far back as his ancestry can be traced, and lat- 
terly in his uncles, four of whom are ministers of the 
Gospel. When, therefore, the Holy Spirit quickened 
him into remembrance of these things, and he "stirred 
up the gift that was in him," the hereditary faith and 
fire flamed out as the voice of one crying in the wilder- 
ness — a voice that calls the Church to judgment, startles 
the gilded guilt of the world with the summons to re- 
pentance, and moves and melts with the tenderness and 
tears of a love and sympathy born of the experience of 
his own happy conversion from a life of youthful folly 
and dissipation. 

His maternal grandmother was distinguished in her 
day, not more for her gentle, modest, lovable disposi- 
tion, which made her a universal favorite, than for her 
strong faith and fervent piety, which consecrated both 
her temper and her tongue to God, so that the Holy 
Ghost seemed at times to take possession of both, and 
come down through them in mighty baptism upon peni- 
tents and congregations while she prayed in public. His 



2 BlOGEAPHICAL SKETCH. 

mother was a woman of superior intelligence and piety, 
but she died when he was only eight years old. She 
left upon his young heart and life the tender ministries 
of motherly gentleness and love which are forever asso- 
ciated in his mind with the angels of God. His " pre- 
cious mother," as he always calls her, is a ministering 
angel to him. His father, Captain John J. Jones, was 
a lawyer of note in Georgia, distinguished for his intel- 
ligence, integrity, probity, social qualities, and consistent 
piety. He prepared his son for the legal profession, 
which he entered in early manhood with the fairest 
prospects and promises of success. But his exuberant 
social temperament soon led him into social excesses, 
and on and on into the vortex of dissipation. Whisky- 
drinking, profanity, and their kindred evils swept him 
down into the deepest depths, and made him so reckless 
that all eiforts for his reformation only maddened him, 
until his father, baffled and mortified, gave up all hope, 
and then lay down to die. While on his death-bed his 
father seized every opportunity to talk with him. As 
death approached the son grew more and more serious, 
until the closing scene — so triumphant over death that 
heaven and earth were brought together, and the prodigal 
boy fell down at the death-bed and cried out for mercy, 
saying: "I'll quit; I'll quit! 'God, be merciful to 
me, a sinner !' " Bitterly did he weep, repent, and pray. 
The sad occasion was sanctified to his salvation. The 
death of the father was life to the son. "That which 
thou sowest is not quickened except it die." Death for 
life, and life from death. 

He was at once called of God to preach the Gospel, 
and he waited not to confer with flesh and blood, but at 
once applied for license to preach, and for admission 
into the traveling ministry. In October, 1872, in At- 



Biographical Sketch. 3 

lanta, Ga., he was received on trial in the North Georgia 
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. 
This step astonished his friends, who did not believe that 
he could ever succeed in the ministry. They saw no 
signs of promise in him. His wife bitterly opposed it, 
and said she would leave him forever if he became a 
preacher. But God overruled all, and opened the way 
for his entrance into the conference and his enlargement 
in the work of an evangelist. His first appointment 
was the Van Wert Circuit, in Bartow and Polk Coun- 
ties, Ga. , which he served three years, the people asking 
for his return each year. In 1876 he was sent to DeSoto 
Circuit, in Floyd County, where he remained two years. 
On this work he began to develop the peculiarities 
which have since made him famous. His plain, pointed, 
and personal denunciations of the popular vices of the 
people offended many, and made the stewards remon- 
strate with him, saying that his family would starve, be- 
cause the people would not pay such a preacher. His 
only reply was: *' I am preaching my convictions, and 
have no compromise to make." The sweeping revivals 
that followed were God's indorsement of his own truth 
and the fearless fidelity of his servant. In 1878 he was 
sent to Newborn Circuit, Newton County. He began, 
while on this work, to travel out and preach for others, 
and try his apprentice hand at evangelistic work. He 
was afterward sent to Monticello Circuit, in Jasper 
County, but the calls for his service in the adjoining 
towns and cities increased so rapidly that he was not 
afterward appointed to any pastoral charge. In 1880 he 
was appointed agent of the North Georgia Conference 
Orphans' Home, when the Home was under great finan- 
cial embarrassment. He not only relieved the Home 
of debt and saved it from financial ruin, but he raised 



4 BlOGKAPHICAL SkETCH. 

money and erected additional buildings, and put the in- 
stitution upon a career of greatly enlarged usefulness 
and prosperity. This has afforded him the largest lib- 
erty in the work of an evangelist, and his uniform 
success has magnified his office until "the world is his 
parish." He has the calling, the spirit, the gift, the 
courage, the directness, the sympathy, the faith, the 
fervor, and the flexibility of a true evangelist. 

That Mr. Jones has made full proof of his ministry, 
his successful revivals in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, 
Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, N. Y., 
St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Chicago, are in evidence. 
Urgent appeals pour in upon him from every part of the 
country, from Washington to San Francisco, and from 
the Lakes to the Gulf. Wherever he goes the Churches 
are stirred and quickened into a better and higher life, 
and sinners are awakened and converted to Christ by 
hundreds and thousands. All classes, from the highest 
to the lowest, from the most learned and cultivated to 
the most ignorant and the roughest, are alike moved 
to repentance and a better life by him, or rather by the 
Holy Spirit through him. His power over men as men 
is marvelous, and his power over vast assemblies is phe- 
nomenal. He is " the master of assemblies." He de- 
spises the mere arts of oratory, as he does all shams ; 
but he possesses the eloquence of earnestness and action, 
the fire and glow of passion, the surprises of thought, 
the wit, humor, ridicule, irony, sarcasm, invective, pathos, 
sympathy, love, humanity, and faith, which, expressed in 
the language of the shop and field, and illustrated by 
the common facts of life and the happiest allegories, 
make him the most sensational preacher now in the 
American pulpit. But he is more than sensational; he is 
endued with power from on high, and commissioned to 



Biographical Sketch. 5 

carry the Gospel to the common people, who always 
hear him gladly. 

Prior to the great work which God wrought through 
Mr. Jones in Nashville, Teun., in the month of May, 
1885, his reputation was provincial. He was known in 
the sections of the South where he had labored as an 
evangelist with great success, and had been invited to 
Brooklyn, N. Y., by Mr. Talmage, with whom he spent 
several weeks, preaching with power in his Tabernacle; 
but for some reason he did not reach the New York 
press to any great extent, and no man in this day can 
reach a national reputation without the metropolitan 
press. His meeting in the great Gospel tent in Nash- 
ville, Tenn., in May, 1885, when thousands of souls 
were converted to God and lifted to higher and purer 
living, with the efficient help of the city press, by which 
his wonderful sermons were scattered broadcast over the 
land, gave him a national reputation, and threw him up 
and out as the most remarkable man before the Amer- 
ican public. From that time on his star has been 
ascending and becoming more brilliant as it hung in the 
moral heavens of St. Joseph, Mo., St. Louis, Cincinnati, 
and Chicago. In Cincinnati his success was remarkable. 
Even the great Music Hall could not contain the vast 
assemblies that pressed their way along the streets to 
hear him, and who seemed never to weary hanging 
upon his words. During his daily ministry of five 
weeks the public interest increased until, according to 
the statements in the public press of the city, forty 
thousand people sought to hear his last sermon. The 
hall was densely packed, and the streets for blocks away 
were also packed with a dense mass of struggling, surg- 
ing humanity, all seeking to see and hear a man who 
had then been talking to them from the platform and 



6 Biographical Sketch. 

through the press from two to three times a day for five 
weeks. The history of religious revivals in this country 
has never presented any thing like that. How many 
thousands of souls were converted to God by his minis- 
try in Cincinnati eternity alone will reveal. The 
Churches of the city were quickened into higher and 
purer living as never before, and the harvest gathered 
from the meeting was truly great. 

While this work is passing through the press Mr. 
Jones and his convert and efficient colaborer, Mr. Sam 
W. Small, are moving Chicago by the power of God, 
and the great Casino Kink is nightly crowded with 
people who hang in rapt attention upon the Word of 
life as preached by these faithful evangelists. The best 
evidence of the power and fame of the great evangelist 
is the fact that some of the leading daily papers of 
the country have leased telegraph lines for the daily 
transmission of his sermons. This is done as a business 
transaction, the public demand for Mr. Jones's sermons 
largely increasing their daily circulation, and making the 
heavy outlay of money a paying investment. There 
could be no stronger reason for the publication of these 
sermons in this permanent form, after careful revision 
and convenient arrangement. The next thing to hear- 
ing Mr. Jones is to read his sermons and sayings. They 
are presented in this volume in their best form and by 
his authority. 

W. M. L. 



CONTENTS. 



SERMON I. 

PAGE. 

The City wholly given to Idolatry, 9 

SERMON II. 

No Man Wronged or Corrupted — *' Quit Your Mean- 
ness," 30 

SERMON III. 
The Church in God, -. . 50 

SERMON IV. 
Trust in God, and Do Right, 75 

SERMON V. 
The Loss of the Soul, 94 

SERMON VI. 
Cornelius, a Devout Man, 118 

SERMON VII. 
All Things Work Together for Good, 138 

SERMON VIII. 
Eternal Punishment, Or the Logic of Damnation, . . 156 

SERMON IX. 
Ungodliness and Worldly Lusts, 169 

SERMON X. 
Law and Order — Help Each Other, 190 

SERMON XL 

Godliness and Life— Glory and Virtue, 214 

7 



8 Contents. 

SERMON XII. PAGE. 
The Wages of Sin, 237 

SERMON XIII. 
Saint Paul's Last Woeds, 257 

SERMON XIV. 
Escape fob thy Life, 279 

SERMON XV. 
Conscience, Recokd, God, 295 

SERMON XVI. 
The Peodigal's Retuen : A Seemon to Men, 316 

SERMON XVIL 
Spieitual Geaces : A Seemon to Wives, 345 

SERMON XVIII. 
Mothee — Home — Heaven : A Seemon to Mothers, . . 369 

SERMON XIX. 
Watch Thou in all Things: A Seemon to Daughters, 393 

SERMON XX. 
Trouble Machines — Imaginary and Real, 409 

SERMON XXL 
The Calls of God, 430 

SERMON XXII. 
Whosoever Will, 450 

SERMON XXIII. 
The Judgment, 471 



SKRMOISr BY Satviuel W. SiMA-LL. 
Deliveeance from Bondage: A Tempeeance Sermon, . 483 



SERMONS AND SAYINGS. 



Skrivlon I. 

THE OIXY WMOLIvY QIVKN TO IDOI>ATR.Y. 

" Now while Paul waited for them at Athens his spirit 
was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to 
idolatry." — Acts xvii, 16. 

I BELT EVE Saul of Tarsus was the greatest man 
in this world^s history. When I measure his 
head I lool^ and admire. When I measure his heart 
I am at a loss to know which is the greater, his 
head or his heart. It takes both head and heart to 
make a true man. If there was a leading char- 
acteristic in the life of this great man it was his 
sterling integrity, his downright honesty. There 
was never but one trouble in the mind of this great 
man, and that was touching the divinity of Christ. 
It took the biggest guns of heaven to arouse and 
convince him, but when once convinced he was 
loyal forever. I believe I am ready to say here in 
ray place, that St. Paul being an honest man God 
put him straight once, and he never gave God a 
moment's trouble after that until God said : " It is 
enough ; come up higher.'' St. Paul was such a 
man as I would imitate. I admire his character. 



10 Sermons and Sayings. 

true, noble, courageous, honest. And now this man, 
waiting for his companions at Athens, sees the whole 
city given to idolatry. 

The charge that God brought against his ancient 
people was this : " My people will not consider.'^ 
-The etymological definition of that word is " to 
look at a thing until you see it.^^ If we look at a 
landscape a glance will take in the main features, 
such as the mountain scenery, the stream, and the 
hamlet. A consideration or careful examination 
will show the foliage of the mountain trees, the road 
leading to the mansion, the cattle grazing on the 
hill slopes, and so on. There is a great difference 
between glancing at an object and considering it. 
St. Paul had considered the state of affairs in Athens, 
and his spirit w^as stirred within him when he saw 
how the whole city was given to idolatry. 

Now one of two things is true of this city to- 
night : either the eyes of Christian people are closed 
to the facts or else the facts are falsehoods ; one or 
the other. You can take whichever horn of the 
dilemma you please. I can take the daily papers 
of this city and read your local columns and see 
without getting at the Bible that it is wrong, that 
there is something radically wrong about it; there 
are too many debauched characters, too many sui- 
cides, too many murders, too many that are drifting 
daily to destruction and ruin. The fact is, a man 
does n't need a Bible to see this world is all wrong ; 
all you need to do is just to read your morning and 
afternoon papers, and then walk this street with 
your eyes open, and if you do that it will not be 



City Given to Idolatry. 11 

one week from to-day until you look on with horror 
that is indescribable. 

Now, let me ask each of you : Did you ever look 
at your heart until you saw it? I grant you that 
you have glanced at it a thousand times, but did 
you ever kneel down and pray for light, and look 
and look and look until you saw your heart? My 
Bible teaches me that : " The heart is deceitful above 
all things, and desperately wicked.^^ My Bible 
teaches me : '^ Keep thy heart with all diligence, for 
out of it are the issues of life.'' My Bible teaches 
me : " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God.'' 

I once saw a pictorial representation of the hu- 
man heart. It represented the sinner's heart; full 
of all kinds of wild beasts, reptiles and unclean 
birds — a hideous sight to look upon. Then there 
was the heart under conviction of sin, with the 
heads of all these animals turned outward as if they 
were getting ready to leave. Then I saw the heart 
converted, cleansed, and it was represented with a 
shining light and a cross. I saw also the back- 
slider's heart, with the heads of all the beasts and 
reptiles as if they had turned backward, and I saw 
the apostate's heart — a perfidious heart — as it was 
filled to overflowing with all manner of horrid 
things ; and the last state of that man was worse 
than the first. 

O, the heart! the heart! This world reminds 
me in some of its phases of the man down in the 
spring branch trying to clear the water, so he could 
get a clear drink. He was doing all he could to 



12 Sermons and Sayings. 

filter and clear the water when some friend called 
out to him: "Stranger, come up a little higher and 
run that hog out of that spring, and it will clear it- 
self.'^ No trouble then. And I declare to you to- 
night, the hardest job man ever undertook in this 
world is to lift up his life while he has an unclean 
heart. 

There is no such thing as a clean life outside of 
a clean heart. I know we have what Ave call moral 
men, but I do n't believe you can separate morals 
and Christianity. In fact, the morals of this world 
are the paraphernalia of Christianity. The man who 
is moral in the sense that he will pay his debts and 
tell the truth, and that sort of thing, may be a villain 
at heart. Our Savior looked at the most moral men 
this world ever saw, and said : " You whitewashed 
rascals, you ! " That is our version. His version was : 
"Ye whited sepulchers ! '^ I had rather be called 
the former. 

And I want to say to you men that do n't profess 
to be Christians, I do n't bring a railing charge 
against you. In the life of Jesus Christ not a single 
harsh word ever escaped his lips toward a sinner. 
When Jesus would talk with a sinner, he would fetch 
up the parable of the lost sheep, where the man left 
the ninety and nine safe in the fold and followed the 
poor, wandering sheep, and when he found it he 
did n't take a club and beat it back home, but picked 
up the poor, tired, hungry sheep and laid it on his 
shoulder and brought it back to the fold. But I tell 
you one thing. The Lord Jesus himself never lost 
a chance to pour hot shot and grape and canister 



City Given to Idolatry. 13 

into the Scribes and Pharaisees, and they are the 
gentlemen I am after, begging your pardon. Now, 
if the sinners about this town want to go to theaters, 
and want to dance and want to play cards and want 
to curse and want to live licentious lives, I say, " Go 
it. Go it, boys;^^ but if you members of the Church 
want to do it, I will brand you as hypocrites until 
you renounce your faith in Christ and have your 
name taken off the Church books. I We got a right 
to say a few things along there, and neither this 
world, nor the flesh, nor the devil, will interpose any 
objection. Do n^t any body say I interposed an ob- 
jection to any man who do n't profess to be a Chris- 
tian, or placed any obstacle in the way of his doing 
just as he pleases. We will attend to your case 
later, but now I want to look in the faces of men 
who have made their vows and their promises to 
God, and who have sworn eternal allegiance to Jesus 
Christ, whose lives are a shame to the Gospel and a 
disgrace to the character they profess. That 's it. 

Now let us look at our hearts. I believe this 
incident, related of Mr. Moody, will illustrate the 
point I am on. On one occasion, when he had in- 
vited penitents to the altar, there came forward a 
great many, and he walked back two or three pews 
to where two Christian ladies were sitting, and he 
said : " My sisters, will you walk forward and talk 
to those penitents ? '^ They looked up at him and 
said, '^ No, sir, Mr. Moody ; we are praying for you." 
^^ Praying for me,'' he said. "Am I not trying to 
live right and get to heaven ? '' " Yes, Mr. Moody ; 
but we are praying that you may have a clean heart.'' 



14 Sermons and Sayings. 

And he said conviction entered his spirit in a mo- 
ment, and he dismissed the services later and went 
home and fell down on his knees and prayed, 
" Lord God, show me my heart. Let me see it as 
it is." And he said, " When the light of heaven 
poured in upon my heart I saw it was full of Moody, 
and full of selfishness, and full of worldly pride ; and 
then I said, ^ Lord God, help me to 

" * Cast every idol out 
That dares to rival thee.' 

" And," said he, " the Lord came and washed out 
all unrighteousness from my heart, and from that 
day until now I have never preached a sermon that 
did n't win souls to Christ." And I declare to you, 
if Jesus had in this town an army of pure blood- 
washed hearts we could win this whole city to Christ. 
And never, never, never will we accomplish the 
work and bring the world to Christ until we, who 
profess Christ, arouse ourselves and wake up and 
shake the deviPs fleas off ourselves and get to be 
decent. 

I can stand any thing better than I can stand a 
hypocrite. I always did have a hatred for shams 
and humbugs and cheats, and of all the humbugs 
that ever cursed the universe, I reckon the religious 
humbug is th« humbuggest. And I tell you when 
a fellow gets a little Methodism in him, and a little 
of theaters, and a little card playing, and a little of 
almost every thing, and is made up out of a hundred 
different sorts of things, then he is a first-class hum- 
bug in every sense of the word. He is just good 
anywhere. • 



City Given to Idolatry. 15 

O, my heart! With the heart right, with the 
fountain clear, the stream will be clear. With 
a good tree the fruit will be good. And I declare 
to you to-night that the hardest work a man ever 
tried to do is to be a Christian without religion ; to 
be a good man with a bad heart. 

Why there are just scores sitting in front of me 
to-night that if it were literally true that we have 
wild beasts and serpents and other venomous things 
in bodily form in our hearts, as they are typically 
there, I would hate to be close round some of you, 
for fear I might get bit before I could get out of 
the way. O, God, give us clean hearts and clean 
hands. 

And then I will say, to be practical all along the 
line, did you ever look at your tongue until you 
saw that ? O, these tongues of ours ! These tongues 
of ours ! We Methodists pour the water on, and 
the Presbyterians sprinkle it on, and the Baptists 
put us clean under, but I do n't care whether you 
sprinkle, or pour, or immerse, the tongue comes out as 
dry as powder. Did you ever see a baptized tongue? 
Say, did you? Did you ever see a tongue that be- 
longed to the Church ? You will generally find the 
tongue among man's reserved rights. There come 
in some reservations, and always where there is a 
reservation the tongue is retained. The tongue ! 
The tongue ! The tongue ! Pambus, one of the 
middle-age saints, went to his neighbor with a 
Bible in his hand and told him : " I want you to 
read me a verse of Scripture every day. I can 't 
read, and I want you to read to me." So the 



16 Sermons and Sayings. 

neighbor opened the Bible and read these words : 
" I will take heed to my ways that I sin not with 
my tongue/' 

Pambus took the book out of his hand and walked 
back home, and about a week after that the neigh- 
bor met him, and he said : " Pambus, I thought you 
were to come back and let me read you a passage 
of Scripture every day?^' and Pambus said: "Do 
you recollect that verse you read to me the other 
day?'' "No," said the neighbor. "Well," said 
Pambus, "I will quote it: ^I will take heed to my 
ways that I sin not with my tongue.' And," he 
said, " I never intend to learn another passage of 
Scripture until I learn to live that one." O that every 
man, woman, and child in this house to-night would 
go away from here determined to live that passage 
of Scripture : " I said, I will take 'heed to my ways 
that I sin not with my tongue. I will keep my 
tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile." 
O me ! Shakspeare told a great truth when he said : 

" Who steals my purse steals trash, .... 
But he that filches from me my good name 
Robs me of that which not enriches him, 
And makes me poor indeed." 

These violators of character — I will venture the 
assertion there are many, many, many here to-night — 
if every word you said about people in this house 
were posted up there in legible words, here to-night, 
you would immediately leave this house and never 
be seen in public again. "We ain't going any- 
where where they put up every thing we say for 
folks to look at." Now, I look at my tongue till I 



City Given to Idolatry. 17 

see it. There is many a man that in other things 
may do well that at last will lie down in hell for- 
ever, and say : " I am conscious I am tongue- 
damned. I would have gone to heaven if I had n^t 
had a tongue." 

My tongue ! And I say to you to-night the 
best thing we can do with our tongues is to speak 
well and to speak kindly of all men. I dare assert 
here in my place, when you take me from this 
sacred stand that I occupy, I defy you to put your 
finger on a word of mine against the character or 
reputation of any body. But I am not talking for 
myself up here. Understand that. Once in Jeru- 
salem a great crowd — it was 1,800 years and more 
ago, as the legend goes, or the allegory — a great 
crowd was gathered in Jerusalem, and they were 
gathered around a dead dog, and they stood and 
looked, and one of them said ; " That is the ugliest 
dog I ever saw." Another said: "O, he is not 
only the ugliest dog I ever saw, but I do n't be- 
lieve his old hide is worth taking off of him." 
Another said, " Just look how crooked his legs are." 
And so they criticised the poor dog. And directly 
one spoke up and said, " Ain't those the prettiest 
pearly white teeth you ever looked at ?" And they 
walked off and said : " That must have been Jesus 
of Nazareth that could have found something good 
to say about a dead dog." O, me ! I like those 
people that always try to see something kind in 
people in their ways and walks of life. 

And then, I ask you again, did you ever look at 
your feet until you saw them? There is a good 



18 Sermons and Sayings. 

deal in that. "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet 
and a light unto my path.^' O, Lord God ! I 
would follow in the footsteps of Him who led the 
way to heaven. There is no circumspect Christian 
who does not see to it that his feet are kept in the 
narrow way that leads from earth to heaven. A 
Methodist, a Baptist, a Presbyterian, a Catholic in a 
ball-room ! Their feet, that they have pledged should 
follow in the footsteps of Christ, are there cutting 
the pigeon- wing to music ! Now what do you 
think of that ? 

And I hear this expression : They say, " Well, 
our Church do n't object to it.'' Now, I would say 
a very strong thing here — and I hope you will take 
it in the very spirit in which I say it, for I never 
said a kinder thing or a harder thing than that — 
you never shall hear a truer thing. Whenever a 
Presbyterian, or a Methodist, or a Baptist, or a 
Christian, or a Congregationalist, or a Catholic says 
that their Church don't object to dancing and 
theaters, and all such things as that, they could not 
tell a bigger lie if they would try in a hundred 
years! Thank God, there is not a Church named 
after Christ on earth that has not thundered out after 
these things with all the power they have got. 

"Our Church don't object." Well, now, the 
Episcopal Church being a Church in authority, how 
they did thunder against these worldly amusements? 
That little Church you belong to may not. That 
rotten little thing! I would not stay in it long 
enough to get my hat if it didn't. 

I was sitting in a train some time ago, and the 



City Given to Idolatey. 19 

train rolled up to the station, and just up on the 
platform, near by, were three ladies. One of the 
ladies said to the other: "Are you going to the 
ball to-night?" The other lady said "I ain't go- 
ing/' " But,'' she said, " I forgot ; you are a Meth- 
odist, and you don't go to such places. I would 
not be a Methodist. I want to enjoy myself.'' 
The other said, " Yes, I am a Methodist, and, thank 
God ! I do n't want to go to such places." " O," 
said the other one, " I would not be a Methodist." 
And the train rolled off, and I felt like jumping on 
the top of that train myself and hollering, " Hur- 
rah for Methodism !" And whenever she goes into 
copartnership with ball-rooms, and with all of the 
worldly amusements that embarrass the Christian 
and paralyze his power — whenever the Methodist 
Church goes into copartnership with these things I 
will sever my connection with her forever. And I 
love her and honor her to-day because she has stood 
like a bulwark against these things, and denounced 
them from first to last. 

One of the honored preachers of this town, a 
man whose good opinion I value highly, one of 
the noblest, truest ministers of this town, said to 
me : "I declare to you, our Churches are little more 
than a graveyard. We have been killed and almost 
buried by this tide of worldliness that has swept 
over our homes year after year." And that is the 
truth. And I can read a ten-page letter that I got 
from a citizen to-day, and turn every face in this 
house as pale as death. That man wrote as if he 
knew what he was talking about. There is many a 



20 Sermons and Sayings. 

mother at twelve o'clock at night, in this town, that 

can sing with the blood trickling in her heart, 

"O, where is my wandering boy to-night? 
He was once as pure as the driven snow." 

And O, why, why, why would I take this car- 
cass, and that carcass, and the other carcass that are 
so offensive? Why would I bring them out before 
this congregation ? Nothing would make me do it 
but to get you to take those carcasses that are de- 
spoiling the very odors of your city, and bury them 
out of sight forever. That is it. You all have 
spent two or three nights looking at me. God help 
you to look at yourselves awhile. And you will 
think I am a beauty before you get through. I look 
at myself from head to foot — my hands, my heart, 
my feet, my tongue. I look at my ways and walks 
and character in this community. Did you ever look 
at yourself as a member of the Church ? Did you 
ever wake up some morning and shut your eyes and 
lie there and say, " Well, suppose every member of 
the Church in town were just like me, what sort of a 
Church would we have? Suppose every member 
of the Church in town prayed as little as I pray, 
what sort of a Church would we have? Suppose 
every member of the Church in town paid as little 
as I pay, how long before the whole thing would be 
sold out by the sheriff?^' 

O, my brother ! it is well enough now and then 
for a fellow to get a square, honest look at himself. 
What sort of a Methodist are you ? There is a man 
that has promised to renounce the world, the flesh 
and the devil and the vain pomp and glory of the 



City Given to Idolatry. 21 

world, and he has promised on oath, before God 
and man, not to follow or be led by them. What 
is your life ? There is that Presbyterian, consecrated 
to God by the most solemn ceremony that heaven 
ever witnessed. Now, what is your character? 
There is the Episcopalian ; with the imposing hands 
of the bishop laid upon his head, and with a cere- 
mony as solemn as eternity, he was dedicated in the 
Church to God last night, and to-night he is in the 
biggest ball in town, dancing his way to hell. 

And no longer than this very year, in one of 
the cities of the South, one gentleman told me this : 
Said he : "I saw the Episcopal bishop lay his hands 
on the heads of a class of twenty, one night, and the 
next night eighteen out of that twenty were at a 
magnificent ball." Now you say, " I would n't have 
done that ; I would have waited a week.'' Well, if a 
fellow is going to do it at all, he had better get right 
at it. Do n't you think that 's so ? How long ought 
a fellow to wait after he joins the Church before he 
goes to his devilment ? Now that 's it. 

I wish I could get all the Methodists and Baptists 
and Presbyterians in this city, and all other Churches, 
to live just as they promised to live. I wish I 
could get all the Episcopalians in town to be as 
good out of Lent as they are in Lent. That would 
be good would n't it ? And I never could see why 
a fellow ought not to be as good one time as another. 
Did you? I never could. And I'm going to be 
just as good the year round as any Episcopalian in 
this town is during Lent. I reckon they all hope to 
die in Lent. If a heap of them die out of Lent the 



22 Sermons and Sayings. 

devil will get them, in my judgment. In a great 
many places they dance Lent in and they dance it 
out. Like the Irishman talking about holidays in 
America — said he ^'Instead of hanging our heads 
and sorrowing over the crucifixion of our Savior, 
we Americans fire it in and fire it out." 

Now, I do n't pick out any denominations and 
say any thing about one denomination that I would 
not say about another. There is no denomination- 
alism in this. I have no purpose and no desire in 
my heart to say one thing about one denomination 
that I would not say against another. That is true. 
I am just talking true things, and any night you 
come here if you do n't like the way this is rattled 
off you can rack out of here just the minute you 
please. For I propose, God being my helper, to 
speak the truth as I see it, and I do n't care what 
men or devils or cities or earth or hell may say, I 
am going to preach, while I do preach, what I be- 
lieve to be the truth. 

And I will tell you Christian people, if you 
think the devil is going to surrender any ground in 
this town until every inch is covered with blood 
you do not know the devil as well as I do. I will 
tell you that. I have been fighting his majesty 
several years, and I declare to you that he is always 
ready for a fight. He has possessed nearly two- 
thirds of this city for nearly forty years, and if you 
think he is going to make a voluntary surrender of 
his territory you do not know him. He is going 
to fight and fight, and every child he has got is 
going to help him ; you can put that down. And 



City Given to Idolatry. 23 

I tell you there is another thing ; there is a heap of 
members of the Church going to help him, too. 
They will that. Some places the devil goes to he 
never has any thing to do himself. He puts his 
hands in his pockets and goes round and gets mem- 
bers of the Church to run his devilment for him. 
They do his work cheaper for him than any other 
class. He does n't have to pay them, and they board 
themselves. In some towns the leading ball-room 
dude is a member of the Church — the fellow that gets 
them all up and runs the thing. 

I look at myself as a member of the Church. 
O me, brother ! when you see yourself as a membei 
of the Church, as a professor of religion, it will do 
you good. I will ask you again, did you ever look 
at yourself as a father ? O me ! how close you get 
to a man's heart when you talk to him of his family. 
Brother and sister, did you ever have your innocent 
child sit on your lap, put its little arms round your 
neck and imprint the kiss of innocence on your 
cheek? Have you ever looked on your lovely 
children lying in their bed and said : " Of all chil- 
dren God ever gave, my children have the purest 
and best of fathers?'' You can go home to-night 
and wake up your little Willie. Get him quite 
awake and ask him " Who is the best man in this 
city ? " He will answer, " Why, you, papa." Ask 
him, " Whom would you rather be most like ? " and 
he will reply, " Why, you, papa." Ask him who 
is the the best man in the world, and he will say, 
" Why, you, papa." He has got no sense. And 
that is why we curse, and damn, and ruin our 



24 Sermons and Sayings. 

children. They can see no harm in us, and just as 
we do they will follow and imitate us. A single 
man may drink as a single man, he may swear as 
a single man, he may lead a godless life as a single 
man ; but as a married man you had better call a 
halt, and ask where you are leading your children 
to day by day. You may sit in the chairs of this 
hall night after night; you may simply have your 
curiosity excited; you may simply come here to 
laugh, but when you gather your children in your 
arms and see that your bad example is leading them 
to death and hell there is no joke about that — no 
laugh about that! God pity me and pity you in 
our relations towards those that lean upon us; and 
if there is any fact in my history I bless God for in 
my heart to-night, it is the fact that not a sweet child 
of mine ever looked in my face when I was not a 
Christian, trying to serve God and set it a good ex- 
ample. 

Did you ever look at yourself as a mother ? Of 
all beings that earth claims its blessings from, it 
looks as though a mother ought to be the best* 
Mother, what is your life before your children? 
Consider yourself! Did you ever look at your chil- 
dren till you saw them? Wife, did you ever look 
at your husband till you saw him? Husband, did 
you ever look at your wife until you saw her? If 
there is any body in the world I would have get to 
heaven, it is my wife ; and there is a husband who 
never talked ten minutes to his wife on religion; 
and there is a wife who never opened her mouth to 
her husband about the way of life. O me ! when 



City Given to Idolatry. 25 

we think of a luime that has been Christless, what 
a sad thing! 

And then we ask you again, did you ever look 
at this city until you saw it? Did you ever take it 
by streets and blocks? Did you ever count the 
bar-rooms in tliis town? Did you ever count the 
beer-gardens in this town? Did you ever count the 
number of men that went in and out of the bar- 
rooms and beer gardens? I bring this question 
square before you. Did you ever count the number 
of soiled doves that curse this city and curse them- 
selves ? O my God, when we look at these pictures 
we have to shut our eyes and drop down upon our 
knees. We say, '' God deliver us and God speed 
us.'^ Did you ever count the billiard-tables in this 
town ? Did you ever count the gambling hells in 
this town ? No wonder this one writes and that 
one writes, "Jones, God bless you! turn loose your 
guns, and do your best to wake up the Christian 
people and show them how this town by streets and 
blocks is drifting to hell every day." 

JSTow, T am going to stick to truth while I am 
here, and I say to every man and to every influence 
in this towm unfriendly to Christ and unfriendly to 
the Bible to fight back. I do not look for any 
thing else. I want to say right now that I like to 
see things moving up, and if you can say any thing 
worse of me than I can of you, lamm in, and I will 
beat you to the tank in that line, may be. Pick 
every flaw you can in every sermon, and if I can 
not pick more flaws in your life than you do in my 
sermons, I will yield the feather to you. I say to 



26 Seemons and Sayings. 

you now, we propose to get your eyes open so that 
you can see yourselves. That is the first sight you 
ought to look at. Then look at St. Paul. When 
he went to the city of Athens, so wholly given to 
idolatry, it stirred his heart within him. I have 
heard Christian people say that they had no feeling, 
no enthusiasm, no religious fervor, but never since 
I joined Christ's Church have I been devoid of re- 
ligious fervor and enthusiasm. The man who goes 
about like a corpse, with no feeling, no enthusiasm, 
that man is either dead to all intents and purposes, 
or he has closed his eyes to what is going on about 
him. When that great man visited the city of 
Athens, so wholly given to idolatry, it stirred his 
heart within him. And he went over to Mars' 
Hill, pointed to the inscription, '^ to an unknown 
God/' and preached that grand sermon generated in 
his soul as he walked through the streets of the city 
and saw that it was wholly given to idolatry ; and 
I tell you to night, when we see ourselves and our 
city and our surroundings as they are, there is hope 
for us. 

There is just one thing more I want you to do — 
that is, to see the cross. It is the hope of the 
world. It is the balm of Gilead. It has the power 
to save. It is the redemption of the race. O, my 
brother, that fourteen years ago and a few days I, 
a poor, wretched, ruined, lost sinner, walked up to 
see my father die. O, how I loved that father, and 
how I broke his heart. I have wished a thousand 
times that I had my father back just one hour that 
I might lean my head on his bosom and hear him 



City Given to Idolatey. 27 

speak the words of kindness and advice he has 
spoken to me in the past. As I stood by his dying 
conch he took my hand in his bony hand, and a 
heavenly smik^ rested on his face just before he 
passed out of this world. He did not die; he did 
not die. His faculties were as bright and his hope 
as buoyant in the very agonies of death as they ever 
had been. As I took his bony hand he said, ^' My 
poor, wayward, godless boy! You have almost 
broken my heart, and you have given me so much 
trouble! Won't you tell your dying father, now, 
that you will meet him in the good world?'' I 
stood there for a moment convulsed from head to 
foot. I said, " Yes, father, I will meet you in the 
good world." I turned away from that dying couch, 
and every step I have made from that time to this 
has been toward the good world. And I mean, 
with the grace of God, to keep my promise. I left 
that bed a wretched sinner, and looked to God. I 
looked up there and 

I saw one hanging on the tree 

In agonies of blood, 
He fixed his languid eyes on me, 

As near his cross I stood. 

Sure, never, to my latest breath 

Can I forget that look ; 
He seemed ta charge me with his death, 

Though not a word he spoke. 

A second look he gave, w^hich said: 

" I freely all forgive, 
My blood is shed to ransom thee, 

I die that you may live.*' 

Blessed Christ, live forever to save dying men. 



28 Sekmons and Sayings. 



SAYINGS. 



Paralyzing Sins. — You say, ^' Jones, why do nH 
you preach against stealing, lying, and drunken- 
ness ?'' It is because that ain't hurting the 
Church. Nobody has any respect for you old red- 
nosed devils in the Church. They do n't notice 
you. They have got no respect for you. Nobody 
has any respect for you if you are a liar. Nobody 
bothers with you if you steal. Nobody cares any 
thing about you. I will tell you it is n't lying, stealing 
and drunkenness that is cursing the Church and 
paralyzing her power and ruining the Church of 
God. It is these worldly amusements that are 
sweeping over our homes and Churches, and par- 
alyzing us and making us to-day little better 
than a grave-yard. That is it. I never saw a 
spiritual man in my life that would stand up and 
ask me, ''Do you think there is any harm in the 
dance ?" Why do n't you ask me if I think there 
is any harm in a prayer-meeting, or I think there is 
any harm in family prayer ? You know there is n't. 
And when ever you hear a fellow asking if there is 
any harm in a dance, you can reply: "You lying 
old rascal, you know there is." 

The '^ Thirty."— When I was in St. Joseph 
preaching, there was a story in the morning papers 
to the following effect: ''Jones is not doing much 
with the Thirty." The next morning I would see : 
"The Thirty were pretty well represented at the 
meeting." I said to my friends, " What does this 



City Given to Idolatry. 29 

^thirty' business mean?'^ ''O," they said, ^^ there 
are in this city thirty millionaires — thirty men of 
the world, worth over a million." These things 
were against them. Some of those men I found to 
be true, noble, Christly, and generous, but those 
who were not we did not make much impression 
upon. One of the old millionaires who professed 
religion joined the Church. Afterward I said to 
him : '^ Well, my brother, you have disposed of your 
soul, you have given it to God, but you have a heap 
harder job left before you — what to do with your 
money. You had better begin to unload now. Shell 
out now, for if you are ever dammed it will be by 
your money. Mark what I tell you." If I had 
one-tenth of the money some members of the Church 
have in this town, and I did not do any better with 
it than they do, the devil would get me as certain 
as my name is Sam Jones. And if you have got as 
much sense as I have and you do n't get up from 
w here you are, the devil will get you too ; you can 
put that down. 



Skrivcon II. 

NO rvlAN WRONGED OR. C0RRUF»XE:ID — "QUIT 
YOUR rvIE-A.NNESS." 

" Receive us : we have wronged no man, we have cor- 
rupted no man; we have defrauded no man." — 2 Cor. vii, 2. 

ST. PAUL knocked at the inner door of the 
Church of Corinth. He was met by that Church, 
and he was asked: ^*^Upon what ground do you de- 
mand so great a privilege?" And he replied, ^^On 
the grounds, first, I have wronged no man with my 
tongue. I have corrupted no man by my example. 
I have defrauded no man in any business transac- 
tion." Jesus Christ watched the doors of his king- 
dom when he stood among men, with the most 
uncompromising and most untiring scrutiny. And 
when the young man approached Clirist, and would 
have entered the kingdom, and Jesus looked upon 
him as he asked the question : '' What must I do 
that I can get into the kingdom ?" Jesus looked 
at him and said: " Keep the commandments." The 
young man said, exultingly : ^'Why, Master, all 
these have I kept from my youth up." And Jesus 
looked him in the face, and said : "One thing thou 
lackest yet," and the young man walked away. I 
suppose his disciples, if they had been as worldly 
as Ave are, would have said : '^ INIaster, that 's a 
magnificent young man. He 's a very rich young 
man. He stands well in the community, and if he 
only lacks one thing let 's take him in. He wdll 
30 



"Quit Youk Meanness.'' 31 

give tone to the Church, and he will pay largely. 
We have few members of that sort, and he 's got 
money to pay our expenses. Why, Master, if he 
lacks but one thing let's take him in." ^'One 
thing thou lackest yet," said Christ, and the young 
man turned and went away, and that 's the last he 
heard of him. The disciples caught at the same 
spirit and taught men this : that you must deny 
yourself and take up your cross and follow Christ. 
They taught us if any man love the world the love 
of God is not in him ; if any man have not the 
Spirit of Christ he is none of his. 

A large Church membership does not mean 
much here now. It does not mean much any- 
where, under any circumstances, and I thank God 
that with the state of things I now find in existence 
everywhere it doesn't amount to much with this 
world, to say the least of it. We ought to quit ask- 
ing the question, " What Church do you belong 
to?" but we ought to ask, ^^How do you live now? 
How have you been doing? Do you pay your 
debts? Do you live right, and live good, and keep 
the commandments ?" Brethren, an open profession, 
an outward profession, that is n't backed up by the 
possession of the principles of Christianity, is not 
worth the paper your name is enrolled on. I want 
to see the day in this country when Church mem- 
bership means consecration, righteousness, and 
godliness. 

I 'm a natural, innate, constitutional inborn 
hater of shams and humbugs, and above all hum- 
bugs that ever cursed this world, the religious 



32 Sermons and Sayings. 

liiimbug is the biggest. That's so. I will give 
you a little illustration : At Harvard, I believe it 
was, there was in the college an old professor, one 
of those thick-glassed old fellows, near-sighted, who 
was a wonderful bugologist. He knew bugology 
better than he did manology, and he was acquainted 
with all the bugs from Adam down, and he had all 
kinds of them in frames hung up around his office. 
In their mischief, and as a joke, the students got 
the body of one bug, and took the legs of another 
and the head of another and the wings of another, 
and put them together just like as if nature had 
formed it that way, and they all trooped down- 
stairs together into the old professor's room, and one 
of the boys says : ^^ Professor, what kind of a bug 
is this?" and the professor stood up and took the 
card on which the bug was pinned, and he cast his 
eyes on it, and after looking at it awhile he said: 
"Gentlemen, this is a hnmhug.^ Now you have my 
idea of a humbug. It 's a fellow that has a heart 
that belongs to the Church, and a head that is run 
by the world, and his hands by the devil, and he 's 
just nothing but a sort of a compound. God deliver 
us from humbugs in the Church! Let's be only 
one of a kind, and let that be a good Christian. 
If I were asked now what is the trouble in Cincin- 
nati — the greatest trouble — a trouble you can 't 
overcome as easily as other troubles — I believe I 
Avould answer that the greatest trouble in Cincinnati 
is, that you have too many Churches here. 

I don't mean to say there are too many build- 
ings or too many pastors. I would not tear down 



^*QuiT Your Meanness.'' 33 

a church in this city, nor hush the voice of a single 
preacher. I would not demolish a single Church 
organization in the town, but I '11 tell you the 
trouble. I will take this Church here for an illus- 
tration. Your minister, you know, is the pastor of 
two Churches, and he has a hard time of it, too, I 
tell you, for one Church is about as much as any 
preacher can look after. The one Church you have 
has an enrolled list of members, but you have a 
Church on the inside of that, and whenever a man 
gets on the inside of the inside Church, then he can 
talk about the communion of saints and fellowship 
of the Spirit, and walk with God. A man who gets 
inside of the inside of a Church is safe for all time. 
But how many get in there? I reckon, if you would 
call a meeting of the truly spiritual members, you 
could hold it in some little side room. You wouldn't 
have to call it in this great room. It would be lost 
here. A double handful of your truly spiritual 
members would look lonely in here, and you would 
have to get them in the parlor. That 's a bad state 
of things. How many men in this Church — and 
there is no better Church in the city — love God 
with all their hearts, and love their neighbors as 
themselves ? 

I am willing for any body to have more money 
than I have, and more land than I ever expect to 
have, and more stocks and bonds than T can ever 
get, but I ain't willing for any man that walks this 
earth to have more religion than I have. I can get 
as much as a soul full, and that 's about as much as 
an angel can get. If I am a Christian, I will be a 



34 Sermons and Sayings. 

Christian ; if I am a Methodist, I ^11 be a Methodist ; 
if I 'm a Presbyterian, I '11 be a Presbyterian ; and 
if I 'm a Baptist, I 'm a-going to be one all over, 
through and through; but I wouldn't be a little, 
old, dried-up, knock-kneed, one-horse, shriveled 
nothing anywhere. Have n't you ever felt some 
time away down in your soul that you wanted to 
get above every thing ? Have n't you had a desire 
to rise up above the sight of this kind of little fellows, 
that you can put twenty of them in a sardine-box? 
Have n't you ever had a glorious feeling in your 
soul that made you feel for a minute as if you 
wanted to be a whale ? You have never known 
much about religion if you never felt in your soul 
as if you wanted to be somebody — something — so 
big that you feel as if you could fly up, and up, 
and up; then you can know something about what 
religion is. 

Religion 's a grand thing. There is nothing on 
earth like it, and nothing in heaven better than re- 
ligion. A poor, tempest-tossed, tempest-driven soul, 
thrown hither and thither in helpless wandering, tired, 
restless, and hungry, finds a haven there. O ! how 
dark it was once for me ; how hungry this poor soul 
was once. How like the crest of a wave ! I knew 
no rest. But I found it in religion. Religion ! 
Religion ! It 's a great word. In its etymological 
sense it means that there is something in this small 
universe that can take up a poor, wandering, hungry, 
restless soul, and tie it back to God. Religion 
means to bring the soul back to its moorings. 
That's it. I have often thought of the picture of 



''Quit Your Meanness.'* 35 

the Lake of Gemiesaret, and, as I looked at the calm, 
placid little lake, surrounded on all sides by rugged, 
towering mountains, I have thought that the winds 
of the storm could never ruffle its bosom. But if 
there was any place on earth where the four winds 
of heaven more fiercely contested for supremacy, it 
was on this little lake of Gennesaret. Christ was 
once riding over this lake in a boat with his disci- 
ples, and the Savior was below in the cabin sleep- 
ing, when suddenly a fierce storm arose, and the 
little ship began to toss and pitch and rock fear- 
fully, and the disciples, trembling with fear, ran and 
aroused him, and said : " Master, wake up, we are 
engulfed. We will be drowned." Christ opened 
his eyes and raised himself up, and wiping the spray 
from his forehead walked up to the prow of the 
little ship, and gathered the waves up to him on his 
lap, like a mother tending her child, and the seas 
subsided, and the winds blew no more. And the 
disciples said : ^^ What manner of man is this, that 
the winds and waves obey him?" Blessed Christ, 
with my poor soul, tempest-tossed and driven, I '11 
crawl up under the cross, and he w^ill pull my poor, 
tired soul up in his great loving arms, and sweet 
peace will enfold me, and I '11 walk away singing : 

" Now, not a wave of trouble rolls 
Across my peaceful breast." 

Brethren, there 's something in religion that will 
make a man of us, there 's something in religion for 
preachers and people. The more religion a preacher 
has, blessed be God, the better it is for him ; and 
the more religion a merchant has, the better it is 



36 Sermons and Sayings. 

for him; and the more religion a farmer has, the 
better it is for him. Blessed be God, religion is not 
only the best thing in the universe, but it is free 
for all. 

" Receive us." Why ? "I have wronged no man 
with my tongue." A man's tongue has a great deal 
to do with his religion, or rather a man's religion 
has a great deal to do with his tongue. We 've got 
sanctified people all over this country. They are 
sanctified in a thousand senses except the sense in 
which St. James talked about sanctification. Hear 
his description of a sanctified man. Listen ! '^ Pure 
religion and undefiled before God and the Father 
is this: To visit the fatherless and \vidows in their 
affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the 
world." A man who has learned to manage this 
term has it right. I believe in sanctification as 
strongly as justification ; but, brethren, sanctification 
means a great deal more, perhaps, than you have 
conceived. A Christian preacher in Augusta went 
down to St. James Church one night to a holiness 
meeting, a sanctified meeting, where sanctified people 
met. Next day he met the pastor of St. James 
Church on the street, and said, "I learned last 
night, for the first time, the difference between jus- 
tification and sanctification." '' Well, how is that?" 
said the pastor. '^ Why, I found out last night that 
justification meant to satisfy God with man and man 
with God. That is justification ; and sanctification 
means to satisfy a fellow with himself, and I thought 
to myself, there's something in that as sure as you 
live. Justification satisfies a man with God and 



"Quit Your Meanness.'^ 37 

God with mau, and sanctification satisfies a man 
with himself/^ 

I have heard people talk as if they were well 
satisfied with themselves, but I never found many 
in their neighborhood who were well satisfied with 
them. Whenever a man gets more religion than 
he has sense, he 's going to talk foolishness right 
straight. Do n't let any body come and say I 'm 
only talking sanctification. I am not. Some of 
the best men on earth practice and live sanctifica- 
tion. But you are obliged to have something more. 
You must get something. Lord Jesus, Master, 
help men to see that religion does not consist in 
what I profess, but it consists in how I live. I 
have no objection to a man's professing sanctifica- 
tion. It's as much my privilege to confess sancti- 
fication as it is justification. I don't quarrel with 
a man as long as he lives on a level with what he 
professes, but when he gets down below that, I'm 
going for him, sure. 

The tongue, said St. James — I ran off at a 
tangent for a while — is full of deadly poison. Many 
a person in Cincinnati — if you will go to their 
homes, and sit by their side, and put your ear to 
their heart — you can hear their heart's blood drip, 
drip, drip, and you say, " what does that," and 
they'll tell you an unkind tongue stabbed it there. 
God pity a man that will take his tongue and stab a 
man's character with it. I '11 tell you another thing. 
This tongue is not only capable of stabbing Christ, 
but the tongue is the cause of all the trouble in our 
midst. It 's not Avhat we do, but what we say, that 



38 Sermons and Sayings. 

kicks up the mischief all around — it ^s what we say. 
I have known men who would leave home in the 
morning and go down to their stores and be as polite 
to their women customers^ and palaver to them as 
sweetly as you please ; but when they go home at 
night they talk to their wives as if they were old 
bears. Did you ever know a case like that, my 
friend? No? Did n't you see one in the glass to- 
night when you brushed your hair before you came 
to meeting? Many a time a good pains-taking wife 
has carefully arranged every thing to make home 
pleasant, and bring smiles to her husband^s face, 
but before he has been in the house five minutes 
he takes that tongue of his and stabs his wife to 
the heart, even before her kiss of welcome is dry on 
his lips, and she goes up-stairs and buries her face 
in her hands and sobs and cries as though her heart 
would break. God pity a woman that has an old 
bear for a husband ! Many a time a poor man who 
has toiled all day with heart pressure upon him be^ 
cause of his kindness to her at home, goes home- 
ward and before he has been in the house five 
minutes the woman that should be all to him stabs 
him with her sharp tongue, and he says, in his grief, 
^' I wish to God I were dead.^' 

I think the finest tombstone I ever saw, and 
the prettiest epitaph I ever saw, was when I was 
visiting an old friend of mine. After dinner he 
took me into the garden, and in the most prominent 
place there was erected a beautiful tombstone of 
white marble, in memory of his wife, and on it I 
read her name and the date of her death, and her 



"Quit Your Meanness.'^ 39 

simple epitaph was this line: "She made home 
pleasant/' 
. I remember the old Irishman who said : " I hope 
[ '11 never live to see my wife married again." 
Brethren, let us be kind to wife, for she has left her 
father and her home and her mother and given up 
all things for us, and she gives her life to us, and 
we ought to be kind to her. Never let a word slip 
from your tongue that will bring a drop of blood 
from her heart. We should be kind and loving to 
our children, too. I remember once, at a camp- 
meeting, tAVO or three years ago, I was talking to two 
or three of the brothers after dinner, and to one of 
them a little girl, a rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed 
fairy, ran up and asked him some question, and he 
snapped out a word to her that almost made her 
faint, so frightened was she. I cried, "You brute, 
you! " Brethren, you can almost crucify one of your 
children with one stroke of your tongue. How cruel 
it is. I know how it is myself. Sometimes when 
I was busy at work my little boy would bother me 
and I would snap at him and drive him away, but 
I afterward hunted him up and begged his forgive- 
ness. But some of you would sooner die than do 
that. Control your tongue and be kind to your 
children. 

Think of the picture ! I look upon that sweet 
child with his arms aronnd my neck and he looks 
with beaming eyes of love in my face for the 
last time; and when his little arms are forever 
folded on his breast and he has gone from us, I 
never want to go in my parlor and look upon my 



40 Sermons and Sayings. 

child and say, ^^ O, how his icy cold fingers point 
my memory to the past, and to my hard words and 
actions to that angelic child /^ God give us Christly 
teaching. Brethren, get your tongues under perfect 
subjugation. This is one ground on which you can 
enter the inner Church. Get your tongues straight. 
But upon what other ground must I rely? "Be- 
cause I have corrupted no man by my example. ^^ 
Brethren, what we need now is a few good examples. 
You go home, mother, and seat your little lovely 
daughter on your lap, and ask her, "Daughter, who 
is the best woman in the world ? " and she will say, 
"Why, you, mamma." " Daughter, whom would you 
rather be like than any body else?" and the sweet 
little child will say, " You, mamma." Ask the 
child such questions as that and she will answer al- 
ways, "You, mamma." Ah, sister, that child is 
mistaken ; yet she is that way — there 's no doubt 
about that. The saddest thing a father ever said to 
me in all of my experience was this. I was a pastor 
of a Church then, and I have been pastor for eight 
years, and know all about the relations of pastor 
and people. I tell you, brethren, you can 't love 
your pastor too much, or pray for him too much — 
he needs your examples and prayers. This brother 
said to me, about four weeks after I had preached 
a sermon in his town: "I heard your sermon on 
* Home Religion,' and it waked me up." He was 
a man of intelligence. I said, " What about it ? " 
" I went home," said he, " and studied my children 
four weeks, in all of their varied characteristics, and 
all of the phases of their character and life, and I 



"Quit Youe Meanness." 41 

reached a verdict/^ '^Wliat was that?" said I. 
^^ \\'ell, I found out that my children have n't got 
a single fault that I or their mother has n't got, or 
a single virtue that we have not got ; a direct copy 
of my wife and myself our children are/' 

Our examples ! A father said to me once, and 
he was a conscientious, good man, too : "A few days 
ago I was in a grocery store, where they sold pro- 
visions in the front part and kept beer and other 
liquors for sale in the back room. I was in there 
buying groceries, when a gentleman came in and 
said to me, 'Won't you have a glass of beer?' 
Without a thought, although I was never in the 
habit of it, I accepted. I walked back, and the 
beer was drawn, and as I put it to my lips my little 
boy pulled at my finger and said : ^ Papa, what 's 
that you 're drinking?' I stopped drinking, and told 
the little fellow it was beer. After a while the 
child again pulled my finger and asked me: 'Papa, 
what was that you were drinking just now?' And 
I told him again it was beer, lager beer; and so it 
was again as we were going up the street, my child 
pulled at my finger again and said : ' What did you 
say that was you were drinking, papa?' and as he 
asked that again, O God, my God, I would have 
given all the world to have been able to recall that 
act. I am afraid that one act will make a drunkard 
of my child." 

Our examples! Brethren, hear me. I shall 
never do, or suffer myself to do, or suffer any one 
else to do, in my home, in the radius of my influ- 
ence, any thing that would or could curse mine or 



42 Sermons and Sayings. 

any body's child. You can have cards at your 
house if you want to, but until this world burns 
down, I never will, so help me God ; they shall never 
be brouglit in or remain in ray house. Do you ask 
me why? Nine-tenths of the gamblers of this city 
were raised in Christian homes; they are the most 
polite and refined gentlemen in town, and if cards 
in any Christian home ever made a gambler out of 
a Christian boy, then so long as life shall last, I 
will never have cards in my house. If demijohns, 
and glasses, and bottles ever damned a member of 
the Church's son, then, so long as I have given my 
home to God, demijohns, glasses, and bottles shall 
have no place there. And I will tell you another 
thing. Old Brother Demijohn and old Sister Dem- 
ijohn, you are just raising up drunkards by the 
hundreds, and I reckon if God Almighty lets your 
sort of folks into heaven, the very angels would 
halloo out, " Brother Demijohn and Sister Demijohn, 
have you got in at last?'' And some women have 
reached the degraded stratum where they are noth- 
ing more or less than bar-keepers for their hus- 
bands — stirring their toddies and mixing their 
drinks. Next to the biggest fool that God's eyes 
ever looked upon is a woman who stirs toddies for 
her husband ; but the biggest fool God's eyes ever 
beheld is a woman that will marry a man with 
whisky on his breath. 

I know what I am talking about. I believe if 
I had had such a wife as some drinking men in 
Cincinnati have to-day, I would now be in a drunk- 
ard's grave and a drunkard's hell this moment; but, 



"Quit Your Meanness." 43 

thank God, my wife never would touch, taste, nor 
handle, nor suffer it in her house. I have had a 
woman come to me, who in her young married life 
had indulged her husband and seen that his wines 
and liquors were carefully prepared for him — I have 
had her come to me with haggard face, and cry out, 
"O Mr. Jones, in God's name, help me to save my 
husband from death and hell;" and she gave her 
husband the first years of her married life in the 
encouragement of drinking! An old woman in a 
county in Georgia — I was preaching prohibition 
down there, and I never felt more at home preach- 
ing Jesus Christ to sinners than I felt down there 
preaching prohibition — I know that it 's unpopular 
in Cincinnati. I have been preaching prohibition 
experimentally, practically, collectively, and person- 
ally for about thirteen years, and it 's never hurt 
me yet, but whisky liked to have knocked me in 
about thirteen months. In one county where I 
was talking prohibition this old snaggle-toothed, 
wrinkle-faced hag said of me, "I hope God will 
kill that man before election day for trying to rob 
people of their living." This old Mrs. So-and-so 
had buried three husbands in drunkards' graves. 
My Lord, what sort of an old hag was that ? 

I'll tell you another thing ; I do n't know how 
the preachers have been preaching to you — they are 
all better men than I am — but if the occupants of 
the two hundred pulpits in Cincinnati will stand up 
and talk for law and order, sobriety and righteous- 
ness will prevail in this city. God wake up the 
pulpits and help the brothers to talk about things 



44 Seemons and Sayings. 

that are damning this city ! One preacher will 
talk about evangelical methods, and another preacher 
will split hairs a mile long on real and unreal re- 
generation. I never hear a man read this text — 
with all due respect to the preachers — *^ Except ye 
be born again ye can not enter into the kingdom 
of heaven'' — I say I never hear that text read from 
the pulpit but I wish you to add : " If we confess 
our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our 
sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 
Jesus Christ knew how to preach, brethren, and 
Jesus Christ touched that subject to one man, an 
intelligent man who staggered back and asked, 
'^ Why, how can this thing be ?'^ Hear me, brother. 
God's Gospel is to teach a man to quit his mean- 
ness. Come to God, and let the Lord explain his 
own works and let God do his own work. I heard 
of a grand preacher who had a grand revival ; he 
preached day and night for three weeks on regener- 
ation, and he never had a single convert; but 
brother, I believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ is ade- 
quate to reach every sinner in this city. 

I am not going to run the grand old ship of Zion 
about ten miles from shore. I am going to bring 
her to the land. Ten million sinners might look 
at the old ship away off and say, " There she is, but 
I can 't get to her, for if I tried to swim to her I 
would drown." Brother, brother ! Let 's run the 
old ship in until her keel strikes the shore. Tell 
the world : " All aboard ! This grand old ship is 
going by ! " You can 't get the old ship of Zion too 
close to sinners. 



"Quit Your Meanness.'^ 45 

" I have corrupted no man with my life ; my 
example has been right ;^' that ^s it. " I have 
wronged no man ; I have set no bad example." In 
addition to that Paul said, I have defrauded no man 
in a business transaction. O, for hands like these 
to work for God and for man ! 

Talk about IngersoU, I never met an intelligent 
man yet that had been damned by Bob IngersoU. 
The only difference between Bob IngersoU and any 
other fellow running after him is this : Bob Inger- 
soU plays the fool for $1,500 a night, and this little 
fellow runs after him and plays the fool for nothing, 
and boards himself. And I tell you Bob IngersoU 
is going to continue to play that kind of a fool as 
long as this country gives him $1,500 a night to 
insult God and ridicule his precious Word ; and 
yet you go to hear him. If I had a dog to go and 
hear him I would kill him. He could n't come to 
my house any more. 

" I have defrauded no man in any business trans- 
action.'' Brother, let us look into this and do what 
it says; do what you say you'll do and quit de- 
frauding men. Brother, hear me ; a man who has 
$50,000, $100,000 riding in a $1,200 carriage and 
living in a $25,000 house, driving down the streets 
meets a poor old wddow from whom he has stolen. 
I tell you if there is any hell, it 's for that kind of a 
man. There 's no use talking. I '11 tell you another 
thing. There are too many men in this country 
boarding with their wives : no doubt about that. 
Let me tell you another thing — when the fellow 
does a clean thing, God Almighty will stand by 



46 Sermons and Sayings. 

him. He will give him three square meals every 
day if he has to put the angels on one-third rations. 
Let ^s do right and defraud no man, and we will 
have righteousness, peace, and joy. 

Well, I have talked considerably over an hour. 
I did not intend to. But hear me, let 's think about 
these things. I tell you I never — I tell you I never 
want to see a revival in this city, or anywhere else, 
that isn't bottomed on bed rock. Let\s go down 
until you hear your boot-heels grating and grinding 
against the Rock of Ages. None of your corn-stalk 
revivals ! We want the sort of revival that will 
make men do the clean thing. If we can have that 
sort of revival I want to see it — but not corn-stalk 
revivals. Do you know what a corn-stalk revival 
is? Well, if you were to pile up a lot of corn 
stalks as high as this house, and burn them up, 
there would n't be a hodful of ashes. We want a 
revival of righteousness ; we want a revival of 
honesty; we want a revival of cleanness and purity, 
of debt-paying, of prayer-meetings, of family prayer, 
and of paying our brothers a little more salary. 
That 's the sort of revival we want. The Lord give 
us this sort! 

One more illustration in conclusion. Some 
mouths ago a man was fearfully crippled in his 
right leg by a railroad accident. It was fearfully 
mangled and bruised. They wanted to amputate 
the leg, but he said : " O I do n't want to lose my 
limb ; preserve it if you can." They watched at 
his side until at last the surgeon said: ^^ My friend, 
the crisis has come when we must amputate your 



"Quit Your Meanness." 47 

leg.'^ He said: "Doctor, has it reached that 
point ?'' " Yes/^ said the surgeon. " Well/' said 
he, submissively, " if there is no chance to save my 
leg, get your knife and go to work.'' When they 
got all ready and laid the patient on the table to 
commence the fearful operation, the surgeons desired 
to administer chloroform, but the mangled man 
said : " I do not want to take that ; if I die I »vant 
to die in my full consciousness, but I want you to 
let me know by some sign when I begin to sink, so 
that I can breathe my spirit out in prayer." They 
told him that he could n't stand the operation with- 
out chloroform, but he said that he could. The 
doctor picked up the knife and said to the patient : 
"If you see me lay the knife down on the table 
you may know that you are sinking." 

The doctor commenced the operation, and the 
man did not flinch. When he struck the arteries 
he laid his knife down to adjust them, and the 
young man took it for a sign that he was dying, 
and commenced praying. The surgeon picked up 
the knife and resumed his work. In a few minutes 
the operation was over, and he saw he was saved, 
and he turned to the surgeon and said : " Doctor, 
when you picked the knife up from the table and 
began your operation, it was the sweetest sensation 
I ever felt in my life." " What do you mean ?" 
said the doctor. " I mean," said he, " that those 
sensations mecnit life for 77ie." Now, brother, when 
God Almighty throws down the pruning-knife it is 
a sign that you are sinking — the sword of the divine 
Spirit cutting through the tendrils of sin ; but, thank 



48 Sermons and Sayings. 

God, he has not laid down the sword. The sword 
of the Spirit means life. O brother, come to life in 
the presence of Jesus, and die in his love. God 
help us to take these things home with us ! 



SAYINOS. 

Inter-Communion. — We have taken down the 
fences now, we Christians, and for this occasion will 
have but one belief The Baptist will take the 
Presbyterian by the arm and lead him over to the 
Baptist pond (for somehow or other the Baptists 
seem to have control of this pond), and on its banks 
they will feed upon Methodist grass, and there will 
be a great fattening. We have a combination of 
Methodist fire, Baptist water, and Presbyterian 
^' hold on to what you 've got,'' and we will have a 
glorious meeting. I feel it. 

Give ! — Once there was a large pond of clear 
water. Beside it ran a happy little streamlet. The 
pond said to its neighbor : " Why do you run so 
rapidly away? After a while the Summer's heat 
will come and you will need the water you now are 
wasting. Take example by me. I am saving all 
my forces, and when Summer comes I will have 
plenty." The streamlet did not reply, but con- 
tinued on its way sparkling and bright, rippling 
over white pebbles, and its waters dancing in the 
sunlight. By and by the Summer came, with all its 
heat. The pond had carefully saved all its strength, 
not allowing a drop of water to escape. The rivulet 



''Quit Youk Meanness.^' 49 

had never changed its way, but had continued, 
making happy all that it had met on its winding 
course. The trees locked their green boughs over- 
head, and did not allow a sun ray to fall upon it. 
Birds built their nests and sang in these boughs, 
and bathed themselves in the pure water. Cattle 
drank of the living stream and delighted to stand 
upon the cool banks. But how was it with the 
pond ? It was heated by the fierce rays of the sun. 
Its waters bred miasma and malaria. Even the 
frogs spurned it, and it became bereft of every sign 
of life. The cattle deserted it, and refused to drink 
of its waters. The little stream continued its jour- 
ney, carrying its waters to the larger stream, to 
the rivers, and at last to the ocean, where God took 
it up in incense and kissed it and formed it into 
clouds. He harnessed the winds and hitched them 
to the clouds ; and they journeyed inland until they 
came to this little happy streamlet, and then the cup 
was tipped, and as the streamlet got back its own 
again, a still small voice might have been heard, 
saying, " It is better to give than to receive.^' 

5 



Sbrmon III. 

THK OHUROH IN GOD. 

"Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus unto the Church of 
the Thessalonians which is in God the Father, and in the 
Lord Jesus Christ : Grace be unto you, and peace, from God 
our Father and the L6rd Jesus Christ." — 1 Thess. i, 1. 

I READ for a Scripture lesson several verses in 
the first chapter of the First Epistle of Paul to 
the Thessalonians. I have read the epistles of St. 
Paul and St. John and St. Peter with some interest, 
and I trust with much profit ; and after reading the 
epistles addressed to these Churches, I am ready to 
admit that, whatever men may say of the Church 
of the first century of the Christian era, all men must 
admit that the Church then had power with God 
and influence with men. And as I look out upon 
the Church of the nineteenth century, I find that in 
just so far as we have lost this similarity, and are 
unlike the Church of the first century, just that far 
have we lost power with God and influence over 
men. And I say again, just in proportion as we 
have maintained our similarity to the Church of 
the first century, have we power Avith God and in- 
fluence with men. I believe this progressive age 
has improved every thing in the universe except 
religion, and men as they approach the religion of 
Jesus Christ, may well approach it cautiously, and 
light upon its truths like a honey-bee upon a flower, 
and extract the honey, but never deface its beauty 
or extract its fragrance. I believe in progressive 
50 



The Church in God. 61 

theology, but not in a progressive Christianity. 
Christianity impressed itself upon men eighteen 
hundred years ago as a soul-saving power, as a 
life-reforming power; and just in so far as it is a 
soul-saving and life-reforming power it still has 
God with it, and it still has power. Give me a 
progressive theology, but let me have religion in 
all Christian purity and power. 

I sometimes think the Church to-day presents 
the picture of a little boy^s copy-book at school. 
You see, he walks up to the teacher, who gives him 
a beautiful line as his copy. The little boy goes 
back to his seat, sits down and imitates the line of 
the copy set him by the teacher, then on the next 
line the little fellow will imitate his own writing, 
and down and down he gets worse and worse to 
the bottom of the page, and the last line the little 
fellow writes on the page is the worst line he writes. 
Now, Christ set the copy. The apostles imitated 
him. The next generation imitated the apostles, 
and so on down, until now the last page and line 
seem to be the most basely written of all. You 
say, is the world getting worse ? Is man getting 
further from God? Are we losing the likeness of God 
altogether ? No ! There are more good men to-day 
upon earth than ever in its history, and there are 
more bad men to-day than ever in this world's 
history. If you think the devil is asleep, if you 
think bad agencies have retired, you have made a 
mistake. 

Never in this world's history has the devil been 
so active, and his agencies more powerful than they 



52 Sermons and Sayings. 

are to-day, and this fact is a very potent factor in 
the world. God is depending on his Church to 
bring the workl to him; the devil is depending on 
his crowd to bring the world to him. Just as God 
is powerless in this world without a faithful pulpit 
and a faithful Church, so the devil is powerless 
without his allies and his followers. Every good 
man in this country is an ally of God, and doing 
his best to save the world. Every bad man is an 
ally of the devil, and doing his best to damn the 
world. That is one reason why I want to find one 
city wholly the Lord's. I want to find one com- 
munit}^ where there is no servant of sin or of un- 
righteousness. I want to move my family into that 
community. I declare to you, as long as you have 
got one man in your community who is an enemy 
of God and the right, listen to what God says about 
him : " One sinner destroy eth much good.'' And 
if one will destroy much good, Avhat will these ten 
thousand sinners all around here do ? Brethren, 
if there was ever an age when we should look to 
primitive Christianity, and see what gave it such 
powder with God, and such influence with men, it is 
to-day. If you think the soldier of the cross has 
nothing to do but just get up on dress parade once 
a week, or once a month, you do n't understand the 
situation ; you do n't see it as it is seen by a great 
many of these old brethren. Well, when I was a 
boy they did n't have Sunday-schools, and they 
didn't have Church papers much. They didn't 
have Sunday-school literature, and they did n't have 
a great many things that I see now floating out be- 



The Chukch in God. 63 

fore the public. Brother, when you were a boy in- 
fidel sheets were not circulated all over this country. 
When you were a boy there was n't a bar-room for 
every half-mile square of the American continent. 
When you were a boy there was n't an infidel stand- 
ing on the street corner in every town, talking and 
showing his infidelity to every man. And now 
that you know these things, do n't you want every 
agency for good put around your home ? For, I 
tell you, your children, when you are dead and 
gone, will be swept by this power into ruin and 
desolation, unless like men you walk out to the 
front and die in your tracks rather than let these 
influences sweep over your home and your land. 
That is what we want. I want you to let me talk 
with you on this occasion for a few minutes about 
the condition of things eighteen hundred years 
ago, and what it is now; and we shall then learn 
something from the lesson before us this afternoon. 
There is a lesson here for every professing Chris- 
tian man. 

I am not here to parade the unfaithfulness of 
the Church of God before the world ; I just stop 
lon^ enough to say this : The meanest member of 
the Church that ever lived in this community is 
better than any of you men out of the Church ; for 
he tries to be good, but you have been mean ever 
since you were born. I have no patience with you 
trifling, cursing, drinking, godless men and women 
out of the Church ; and while I talk to the people 
of God about their shortcomings, I want you to 
understand, that you are meaner than a hundred of 



54 Sermons and Sayings. 

them put together ; so do n't you take special com- 
fort to yourself now, while this is going on. 

Now let us look at this subject as it presents 
itself in the light of God's truth ; and, brother, truth 
is powerful for God and for you just in proportion 
as you hear and obey the truth. Paul in the letter 
before us, begins thus : " Paul and Silvanus and 
Timotheus unto the Church of the Thessalonians, 
which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus 
Christ ; grace be unto you and peace from God our 
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Paul and 
Silvanus and Timothy had preached the Gospel of 
the Son of God at Thessalonica some months before 
the date of this letter, and after leaving Thessa- 
lonica, or rather while they were there preaching 
the Gospel, men heard the Gospel, believed the 
Gospel, and obeyed the Gospel, and he organized 
them into a Christian Church in this heathen city, 
and then leaving on his missionary tour, after an 
absence of some time — I know not definitely how 
long — St. Paul addressed a letter to the Church at 
Thessalonica in this language: "Paul and Silvanus 
and Timotheus unto the Church of the Thessalo- 
nians, which is in God the Father and in the Lord 
Jesus Christ." Now he here locates the Church of 
God : " the Church of the Thessalonians, which is 
in God the Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ." 

Now every truly Scriptural Church is located in 
the heart of God, and God lives in the heart of 
every Christian Church. The term, "in Christ 
Jesus" and "having Christ Jesus in you," are in- 
terchangeable. If any man be in Christ Jesus he 



The Church in God. 55 

is a new creature; and if Christ be in you, he is 
formed in you the hope of glory. Brother, having 
Christ in you, and being yourself in Christ, mean 
pretty much the same thing. 

Our Savior said to the race: "Behold, I stand 
at the door and knock ; if any man hear my voice, 
and open the door, I will come in to him and will 
sup with him and he with me.^^ And, O, what a 
privilege it is to open the door of my heart and let 
Christ in. What a privilege for him thus to be my 
guest in my own heart. I am ashamed of every 
thing I have to offer him. I am ashamed of the 
home I give him when he is my guest. Blessed 
privilege! Christ my guest! And then he says: 
"You shall sup with me now. I have been your 
guest in your heart; now you shall sit down; you 
shall be my guest, and you shall sup with me. I 
will be host, and you shall sit down at the table of 
my own heart and be fed with Heaven's bread and 
angels' food." 

I am the guest of Christ, he is my host. Brother, 
you know what that means. I want to say at this 
point that you can run Confucianism without Con- 
fucius, and you can run Mormonism with Joseph 
Smith and Brigham Young in their graves, but you 
can't run Christianity without a personal, abiding, 
indwelling Christ. It is not a question of how you 
have been baptized, nor what Church you belong 
to, but the question of questions is. Is the Lord 
Jesus Christ embodied in your heart, and is he an 
ever-abiding guest? That is the question. The 
Lord Jesus Christ must abide in the hearts of men, 



06 SEilMOJfS AND SaYIJs'GS. 

SO that we can say: "I am crucified with Christ, 
nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in 
me." And it is this ever present, abiding, loving, 
reigning Christ in the soul that gives us power with 
God and influence with men. 

" But," says some one, " I have made profession 
of religion." Well, what if you have?" Have 
you got religion in your heart, and can you say, 
" The life that I now live I live by the faith of the 
Son of God, and the love of Him who gave him- 
self for me ?" " I die daily," said St. Paul. The 
first thing I do when I rise from my bed is to fall 
on my knees and die to this world, its pleasures, its 
profits, its friends, its emoluments, its losses ; and I 
live to God, I live to righteousness, live to all that 
is good. That is it. The Church of God is im- 
planted in the great heart of God, and God lives in 
the heart of the Church. 

If I wanted to find God I would seek him in 
the hearts of good men and women. Whenever I 
am close to a good man I am close to God, for 
every good man is the home of God, and dwells in 
the heart of God himself. Well, now, the Church 
partakes of the nature of each individual member 
forming that Church. If a pastor has four hundred 
members in his Church, or if he has two hundred 
members, and fifty of them are good men and women, 
who love God and keep his commandments, and one 
hundred and fifty others are indifferent and care- 
less and godless and Christless, then you see what 
sort of a Church he has. Three-fourths of it are 
astray from God and duty, and one-fourth pro- 



The Church in God. 67 

claiming the love and teachings of Christ in their 
character. You see what sort of a Church that 
presents. Why, in the time of slavery, brothers, 
if a man had two hundred slaves, and only fifty 
of them were able to work, would n't he have had a 
hard time making a living for his slaves? So with 
two hundred members in a Church, and only fifty 
of them active, that Church has got all it can do 
to look after those one hundred and fifty invalids, 
and has no time to go out and work and bring the 
world to Christ. Don't you see? 

How many members attend the prayer-meetings 
in this Church ? How many do you have Wednes- 
day nights ? Do you say about twenty ? Well, I 
would sell out and quit, if that is the case. I 'd 
sell out on credit. I would no more put my wife 
and children in such a Church as that — mark 
what I say — I would n't suifer my children to be 
raised in a Church of that sort. Now, you can run 
that line if you want to, but mark what I say. 
Every man in the Church who has religion goes to 
prayer-meeting. You ask, How do I know? I 
know because I have got religion, and it walks 
about with me. You see I know what religion will 
do for a fellow. I got it thirteen years ago. I was 
right there when the thing happened, and I know 
just exactly what it will do for a fellow. I have 
tried it. 

I will tell you another thing. Whenever you see 
a Church and community run down that low religi- 
ously, there are very few women in that community 
that God can count on. I tell you when the devil 



58 Seemons and Sayings. 

gets the help of a man^s wife on his side, she has 
very nearly gone nine-tenths of the road in the 
direction of her husband^s destruction. Sister, what 
is the matter with your husband on Wednesday 
night that you have n't got his arm to bring you 
out to prayer-meeting? What is the matter? Is it 
a fact that he has got no wife, and his wife has got 
no husband ? Is that the trouble ? There are a 
great many women in this world that I think, when 
I look at their husbands, ought not to change their 
names at all, but let their husbands go by their 
name. They married such a little lump of nothing 
that their husbands ought to go by their wives' 
names, so that the people could ask of them, " What 
was your name before you were married?" I think 
that would go in first-rate. I reckon you will put 
a little tin horse in his stocking for him every 
Christmas, won't you, and buy him some candy. 
Some of you look disgusted at this point. That is 
the sort of look I once saw a woman wear when I 
was doing my best to lift her poor drunken boy out 
of debauchery. She was sitting back making noses 
at me. Many a woman will stand right by and 
hear her husband getting a going-over by some 
friend. But the preacher, she thinks, must be very 
careful what he says, or' she will turn her nose up 
at him. Yes, and the devil has got a mortgage 
on that nose of yours, too. He is going to foreclose 
some of these days, too. These are facts, and facts 
are stubborn things, you know. You can not get 
round a fact. 

Suppose that with a Church of two hundred 



The Church in God. 6d 

members we have twenty that are full of faith in 
God and duty, and one hundred and eighty that 
stand out careless and indifferent — what can such a 
Church as that do? Only twenty of you able to 
fight, with one hundred and eighty hospital rats to 
look after ! Do n't you see why we make no inroads 
on the world? Don't you see why it is that you 
have n't had one hundred genuine conversions in the 
last ten years ? Now you see the reason of things, 
and my plan is to take a common-sense view of the 
facts. I like to deal with facts. You can 't get 
round a fact. Theories you can brush out of the 
way, but when you come to a fact you can not dig 
under it, and you can't jump over it; you have to 
meet it. 

" The Church of the Thessalonians, which is in 
God the Father ; " that means in every good word 
and work. That means in every thing that will help 
the world to be better and against every thing that 
makes the world worse. "Which is in God the 
Father, and in the Lord Jesus Christ." Then Paul 
goes on : " We give thanks to God always for you 
all, making mention of you in our prayers." 

O, what a privilege it is for a preacher to pray 
for his congregation — his Church. 

I never preach to a congregation for whom I 
have not prayed. I would be afraid to preach to a 
man for whom I had not prayed. I do thank God 
that always before I am called into the pulpit it is 
my privilege to go to God in prayer. There are a 
great many styles of preachers in this world, and a 
great many styles of preaching. I reckon every 



60 Sermons and Sayings. 

man has his own style. If he copies after no one 
else he is what we call an original character. God 
never made two men alike. If he did, one of them 
was of no account. You can put that down. A man 
is potent just as he is himself. Now, the general 
pulpit style of America is about like this : " Here 
I am, Rev. Jeremiah Jones, D-o-c-t-o-r of D-i- 
v-i-n-i-t-y, saved by the grace of God, with a mes- 
sage to deliver. If you repent, and believe what I 
believe, you will be saved, and if you do n't you 
will be damned, and I do n't care much if you are.'' 
That is the style. That 's the general style of the 
American pulpit everywhere — except in this city, 
of course. Brethren, I won't make any charges 
against you. A great many preachers go into the 
pulpit with a ramrod and a pump. They ram back 
every thing that they think will hurt, and pump out 
every thing that is pretty and nice — and the people 
are just dusting to hell by the thousand. At every 
conference you notice a delegation going up to the 
bishops from the leading Churches. One delega- 
tion will go to the bishop and will say : " Bishop, we 
want you to send us a preacher this year that is 
popular with the young people." Another delega- 
tion will go in and say : ^' Bishop, please send us a 
preacher that is popular with other denominations." 
Another crowd will go in and say : ^^ Bishop, please 
send us a preacher that is popular with sinners." 
And another crowd will go in and say : ^^ Bishop, 
please send us a preacher that is popular with every 
body." But I tell you, I have never heard of a 
delegation going up to conference and asking the 



The Church in God. 61 

bishop : " Please, sir, send us a minister that is 
popular with God Almighty. We want a preacher 
that walks and talks with God." O, my, when you 
get this sort they will turn this country over; no 
doubt about that. 

St. Paul prayed for the Church of the Thessa- 
lohians, and it is the duty of a preacher to pray for 
his congregation. I have no doubt some of these 
preachers here have been wrestling with God at 
midnight, on their knees, after all their members 
were asleep. O God, bless and save my people, 
these preachers have long been praying. Now what 
have you been doing? It takes just three things to 
make up a good sermon — thought, study, and prayer. 
You, men, associate that with every sermon you 
hear. Think you that I do n't have to study and 
pray over what I am saying? If I did n't you 
wouldn't want to hear it. You associate with ser- 
mons study, and thought, and prayer, don't you? 
Now, some preachers say that they don't have to 
study any. They say they open their mouths, and 
the Lord will fill them. Well, so he will fill them. 
Just as soon as you open it he will fill it with air. 
That is all that I know of that he will fill it with. 

There is many an old air-gun shooting around 
over this country. Isn't that about all you can 
make out of that? These fellows don't have to 
study. 

We liad one of them once in Georgia — I do n't 
.know how many more we had. He said he did n't 
study; he just opened the Bible, and the first pas- 
sage he struck was his text. He had Herod cutting 



62 Sermons and Sayings. 

off Abraham's head, and he had John the Baptist 
in the fiery furnace. They had him up before a 
conference, and the presiding elder said: '^Brother, 
I understand you do n^t study." The good brother 
responded that he didn't have to study; he just 
opened his mouth and the Lord filled it. ^^But/' 
said the elder, ^^ did n't you state awhile ago that 
Herod cut off Abraham's head ?" ^' O yes, I said 
that." '' Did n't you tell them that God put John 
the Baptist in the fiery furnace?" "O, yes, I said 
that, too." "Well," said the elder, "you can go 
on out. You can't get any new license from me. 
God doesn't tell lies, and his Bible is true; and 
he didn't tell you any thing about Herod cutting 
off Abraham's head, or about John the Baptist being 
in the fiery furnace." So much for those who open 
their mouths for the Lord to fill them. Let me tell 
you, God never does any thing for a fellow that he 
can do for himself God is n't going to run around 
posting lazy preachers that do n't study. He has 
got too much else to do. You associate with a ser- 
mon prayer, and thought, and study — and it just 
takes those three things to get ready to preach — 
and there is no preparation without them. You 
show me a preacher that doesn't study, and I will 
show you an air-gun. Of course there are no air- 
guns here, but I am speaking of those in Georgia. 
The next thing to an air-gun is an old powder- 
gun — one with nothing in it but powder. Nobody 
ever gets hurt with that. It is like a fellow shoot- 
ing at birds without any shot. The birds enjoy it 
as much as he does ; none of them get hurt. But 



The Church in God. 63 

whenever a fellow puts in powder and shot, and puts 
on a great cap from the ammunition of God, and 
lays the barrel on the rail and takes careful aim, 
and fires and hits — that ^s the time. After he hits 
the fellow he can stop and apologize : " I did n't 
mean to hit you there. I aimed here." But it 's all 
right. That is one of the preachers who aims where 
he hits and hits where he aims. The greatest bless- 
ing any community ever had is a game preacher — 
never afraid of the devil. And the greatest curse 
is a time-serving preacher who is afraid of hurt- 
ing somebody's feelings if he does his duty. Poor 
little fellow ! You should send him over some 
molasses candy this evening and let him suck it. 
Now, it takes two things to make a good sermon, and 
that is a good preacher and a good hearer, and when 
you get a good preacher and a good hearer together 
then you are going to have a first-class sermon. 
Well, if I must study, and read, and pray in order 
to get ready to preach, what must you do to get 
ready to hear ? The Bible says a good deal about 
that. It says : " Take heed how you hear.'' It 
says : " Be not forgetful hearers, but doers of 
the work." If you want to be blessed in your 
deeds, get ready to hear. How will you get ready 
to hear ? By thought, and prayer, and study. Just 
precisely as a man gets ready to preach, you ought 
to get ready to hear. 

Now, for instance, here is a woman. One fact in 
her history is, that she is always made happy un- 
der preaching. One day a preacher went home 
with her from Church, and says : " Sister, how is it 



64 Seemoxs and Sayings. 

that you are always made happy under preaching, I 
do n^t care who preaches, or what sort of a sermon 
it is V^ " Well," said the woman, ^' yon are the 
pastor, and you come round once a month and preach, 
and I spend thirty days in praying God to bless 
his word and make it effective in my soul ; and do 
you reckon that after thirty days of earnest prayer 
the Lord disappoints me? So it is a good sermon 
to me, I do n^t care what it is to other people.'^ 

AYhen you get ready to hear, you are going to 
be profited by the preacher. You can take the best 
seed in the world and scatter it out here, and you 
need n't expect to bring any crop ; but you plow the 
soil, and put in the seed, and till the ground, and har- 
row it, and in due time comes the harvest. So you can 
take the best seed from the granaries of heaven, and 
scatter it about on the ground of men's hearts, and 
you need not expect any return from it, but if you 
take the plowshare of faith and prepare the ground, 
and harrow it over with supplication, then the seed 
falls down into good ground and springs up and 
bears fruit; some fifty, some sixty, and some a 
hundred-fold, to the glory of God. 

Brother, it is just as necessary that you prepare 
your heart to hear as it is to prepare your ground for 
the seed. This is the seed of the Gospel falling 
upon your heart, and if there is no preparation for 
the seed there will be no harvest. Get ready to 
hear. How many people have been on their knees 
wrestling with God, praying, " God bless this sermon 
to-day to my soul ; God prepare me to hear his 
word." How manv of vou have wrestled with 



The Church in God. 65 

God that the power of heaven may rest on the 
word, and that you may be prepared to hear? 

Prayer, that is what we want. Praying men 
and women, and the preachers that will wrestle with 
God and people that will wrestle with God. Noav, 
we do n't want any special preachers. God can put 
up with any sort of preachers at a meeting if he can 
just have the power iu his work — and you pray the 
poAver down from God. That is the way to get it. 
I can stand here and preach for a week and nothing 
will be accomplished unless you get the power of 
the Holy Ghost on the word. 

And, brethren, what we need now is not a fresh 
preacher, but the Holy Ghost falling down on us, 
and we want to call him down, to pray him down, 
and we want a dozen or two hearts lifted up in 
prayer, so that before the first prayer gets up to God 
the answer will meet it half-way, and by the time 
the prayer get^ to the ear of God the blessing is 
down here on the people. That is what we want. 
I think of a brother, one of the most wonderful 
workers for Christ, I ever knew. He was at Hunts- 
ville, Ala., and I wondered at the power of God that 
came down on the people. I knew several were 
praying. One night about 12 o'clock J was sleep- 
ing in the room with a young brother, who went 
there w^ith me, and another gentleman, and they 
Avere disturbing me with their snoring, and I put 
up with it until after 12 o'clock, and I knew I ought 
to go to sleep, and I woke them up to help me move 
my bed into the parlor, as I wanted to lie in there. 

So they helped me into the parlor, with my bed, and 

6 



6Q Sermons and Sayings. 

as we went into the parlor we walked right up on 
our host — one of the best men under the skies — 
praying after midnight on his knees, in his parlor; 
wrestling with God. And my brother told me that 
he walked out in the hall that same night at three 
o'clock^ and there was the brother still on his knees 
and still wrestling with God for the power of the 
Holy Ghost upon us. I told my brother, " Some- 
thing has got to happen from this praying, when you 
see God's people wrestling all night in prayer that 
heaven's blessing may rest upon the people." Breth- 
ren, what we want here is men that are so busy 
praying at 3 o'clock in the morning that they won't 
have to preach at all. I want this settlement saved. 
O, God, let down thy power. 

Charles G. Finney, perhaps the most powerful 
preacher that ever stood before an American audi- 
ence, carried around with him an old brother, Nash. 
The old brother seldom went to Church, but when 
Brother Finney would start to preach, he would 
fall on his knees in their room and begin to pray. 
One night, Mr. Finney said, he began to preach, 
when in a few moments the power of God came 
down on all the congregation. He could almost 
hear the audible steps of God coming in the aisles 
of the church, and he said every sinner in the church 
was converted to God, and every Christian made 
happy. He never saw such power in his life. As 
he walked out he said : " I know Brother Nash has 
had a big time with the Lord to-night, I know he 
has." He started to walk on to where he lived 
with Brother Nash, and when he got there Brother 



The Church in God. 67 

Nash was lying flat on his back on the floor. After 
he got quiet Mr. Finney said : " I suppose you had 
a great time with God. God has been upon us with 
power." '^ Yes/' said Brother Nash, " I was pray- 
ing, and God came on me with such a baptism that 
I prayed for the same thing on the Church, and he 
stayed with me and went to the Church, and I stood 
up and praised him, and sat down and praised him, 
until I fell on the floor and shouted praise to God 
for sending such power to rest upon the children 
of men.'' 

I tell you, my brethren and sisters here this 
afternoon, if we can get men and women who will 
pray God's power down on us, you will see things be- 
fore another week that you never expected to see just 
right here. Now, mark what I tell you. Lord God 
Almighty, pour upon these people the spirit of 
prayer, so that we carry it with us every moment. 
Mr. Finney said : " I have never seen the power 
of God rest upon a people until the spirit of prayer 
has taken possession." Now, brother, let us leave 
Sam Jones out of this meeting. This is God's 
work. Let us give God the glory. He will glorify 
no man on earth. As soon as you look up you will 
see the power of God down upon you. Prayer, 
prayer, that is what we want. Mr. Story, I believe it 
was, illustrated this question. He said he was pastor 
of a Church for eighteen years, and each successive 
year God poured revival fire upon his people, and 
hundreds and thousands of souls were turned to 
good. ^' And," he said, " I frequently wondered why 
it was that God blessed such an unfaithful pastor as 



6S Sermons aj^d Sayings. 

I am.^' He said : ^^ At last I was standing by the 
bedside of one of my people, when perhaps he Avas 
dyingj and he took my hand and said : ^ Dr. Story, 
I am going to leave the world and go home to God. 
I want to thank you for much help you have been 
to me as my pastor. I have been poor and not 
able to do much for you, but I have done what I 
could, and for the eighteen years since you took 
charge of your Church, I have spent every Saturday 
night in prayer that God might pour his power 
upon you.^ '' Now, when you want power, you get 
on your knees ; for I tell you the power of the pulpit 
is with the pew. I wish we had some good prayers 
here. I wish we had some women that walk and 
talk with God, and God would hear them as they 
cried Amen ! Pray without ceasing — your work 
of faith and labor of love, and patience of hope. 

Now, first, the Church was located in the heart 
of God ; secondly, it was a prayerful Church; 
thirdly, it had works of faith, labors of love, and 
patience of hope. These are the three component 
elements of a Scriptural Church — works of faith, 
labors of love, patience of hope. What is a work 
of faith ? It is n't a work of sight or knowledge. 
What is a work of sight ? See that farmer plowing 
along between those rows of corn that wave on each 
side of him like a sea of green. Look at him as 
he plows between the rows. He can almost hear 
the joints of the corn cracking and popping under 
the pressure of its growth. As he plows he looks 
upon the corn. That is a work of sight. He can 
just see his crop coming on. What is work of 



The Chuech in God. 69 

knowledge ? I heard two darkies coming along 
one day and one of them said : " I loves to work 
for So-and-so.'^ The other says; " Why f ^ He 
answers : ^^ Because I knows that just as soon as 
the work is done there is the money.^^ That is a 
work of knowledge. What is a work of faith? I 
will tell you. Let me illustrate. Suppose you 
knew that old Colonel So-and-so was going to get 
religion to-morrow and join the Church. Suppose 
you knew that, what would you do? You would 
go and see him this evening and talk and pray with 
him. After it was over, would not you want to say, 
" I had a finger in that pie ; I went and talked and 
prayed over him.^^ Do n't you know human nature 
so well ? Well, what 's a work of faith ? It is go 
and see the old colonel this evening and pray that 
to-morrow he may be converted, and pray with 
him, because God says, " according to your faith so 
be it unto you.'' You well know what it is to pull 
on a cold collar. It takes a good tame horse to do 
it. You hitch him up of a cold, frosty morning, 
hitch him to a big load, and he sets to and pulls it 
off like a mule — that is what we call a work of 
faith. It is pulling on a cold collar. That kind of 
a horse you can hitch to a tree on a frosty morning 
and he will make a hundred set pulls at it — that is 
what we call a work of faith, pulling on a cold 
collar. I knew a fellow once who had a wagon 
load of wood to haul to camp and it was a cold 
morning. He hitched up his horses, but they would 
not pull a pound. He put a boy on each horse and 
then he ran them up and down, riding about two 



70 Sermons and Sayings. 

or three miles, and got them warmed up and then 
hitched them up and they pulled right off. 

You notice how a preacher, Baptist or Method- 
ist, in this country starts a meeting. The first 
thing you know he starts raking his members up 
and down the road for a week or ten days. He is 
getting the Church warmed up. They would not 
pull a hen off her roost till you got them warmed 
up. After you have warmed up a brother he will 
pray powerfully, but if you did n^t he would n^t 
pray one bit — running on feeling, you know. But 
he is a sight when you get him warmed up. Now, 
my doctrine is, I will serve God and do right, feel- 
ing, or no feeling. That is my doctrine. I never 
stop to ask how I feel. I just do what it is God 
wants done or what it is the Church wants me to 
do. A dog will run a rabbit when he feels like do- 
ing it, and when he does n^t feel like it, he won't. If 
I were you, and all run to feeling, I would hunt rab- 
bits. I reckon you would make a good rabbit dog. 
You ain't fit for much else. Now, a w^ork of faith 
is to go right along and do what God and his 
Church wants you to do, and ask no questions; 
that is a work of faith. What is faith? St. James 
says: "If you will show me your faith without 
your works I will show you my faith by my works." 
I will show you what I believe by the way I do. 
And if you will find me a man that is busy for 
God, I will show you a man that has got works of 
faith and will do any thing whether he feels like 
it or not. A heap of people think if they do a 
thing when they do n't feel like it that they are 



The Chukch in God. 71 

hypocrites. Well^ we will talk about that some 
other time. 

Now, what is the difference between a work of 
faith and a labor of love? There is nothing in 
kind — it is a difference in degree. For instance, 
the first day I joined the Church I went home at 
night and my wife pulled the Bible down and said : 
" We will have family prayers.^^ I took the Bible 
out of her hand and it almost shook me from head 
to foot, and my first impulse was to lay it back on 
the table. I read a chapter, however, and got down 
and prayed. The perspiration just poured off me. 
O, it was hard. It was a work of faith, but I just 
kept on ^praying, and prayed night and morning in 
my family until it has got to be the most delight- 
ful moments I spend at home — the time I spend in 
family prayer. Here's a man who the first week 
went to prayer-meeting. It was a work of faith, but 
he kept on going, till now he is impatient for the 
prayer-meeting to begin. He looks on Wednesday 
night as better than any other night in the week. 
Here 's a weak faith. Get at it, whether you like 
it or not, and keep at it, and then it becomes a 
labor of love. An old brother gets up in meeting 
and says : ^' I feel it is my duty to pray in my 
family, and I feel it is my duty to pray in public, 
and I feel it is my duty to support the Gospel. '^ 
You old hound, you, you did n't get half a mile on 
the way to glory, yet you are running on duty ! 

" I feel it is my duty to do so and so.'' Sing it 
out ; you have heard such people, have n't you ? I 
thank God this thing of religious duty is played out 



72 Sekmons and Sayings. 

with me. I tell you what it is with me — it is a 
pleasure; it is a privilege. Why, brother, I use 
family prayer and public prayer, and read the Bible 
and visit the sick and give to the poor, just as a 
bird does its wings, to carry me where I am going to. 
Do n't you see I use these things as I use the passen- 
ger trains, to ride on to take me where I am going? 
What would you think of a man starting from home 
who would go trotting down the railroad on foot ? 
You ask him why he does n't take the cars, and he 
say : " Well, I feel it my duty to go on foot.'' You 
know, when they first built engines they put only 
two wheels. on them. They would run and make 
schedule time, but schedule time was only just three 
miles an hour, and it was all they could do to pull 
one car. After a while they put a jack under that 
engine and put eight more wheels under it, making 
ten in all, and that engine will cut along at the 
rate of fifty miles an hour, and will pull forty cars 
if you couple them on. That is the difference be- 
tween the little two-wheeled fellow and one of the 
sort they run now. Brother, you have got your two- 
wheeled business out ; you- will make the schedule 
time of three miles an hour. Brother, there are lots of 
your little two-wheelers saying prayers and reading 
Bibles. T want the good Lord to get under some 
of you old brothers and put eight more wheels un- 
der you. I want you to have family prayer and 
visit the sick — and make public prayers — and do 
every Christian work, for that is what Christians do 
who have the wheels to roll on. The difference be- 
tween a stationary engine and a locomotive is that 



The Chuech in God. 73 

the former stands still, while the latter has wheels, 
that is all. Now, brother, get up and let God 
put more wheels under you. That is what you 
want. You are making three miles an hour right 
along, but the devil can catch you whenever he 
wants to. It is no trouble for the devil to catch 
you, and keep up with you, or lie asleep an hour 
or two, and then catch up again, and give you a 
smiling and smashing up. Lord, give us wheels 
enough to keep out of the way of the devil. Just 
think of it. Three miles an hour, and on my jour- 
ney home! "Angel band, come bear me home." 
Well, if you ever get there, angels will have to 
take you, for that thing you are on will never do it. 
Now, listen, it is a labor of love to do any 
thing, and do it cheerfully. The Lord loves a 
cheerful servant ; a cheerful servant loves the Lord. 
Any thing the Lord wants done, do it cheerfully, 
gladly, lovingly. Hear that. Give cheerfully, 
work cheerfully, labor cheerfully at any thing. 
Brother, I have been asked the question many a 
time, "How can you stand so much work?" I 
do n't know but one reason for it, and that is, I 
have gone along cheerfully and gladly from the 
day I started intil now, and I believe if I had 
gone along slowly and complainingly, I would have 
worked myself into the grave years ago. Brother, 
I believe cheerfulness is the journal that keeps 
down the heat. You need to get more oil, some 
of you, or you will burn up before you get to per- 
dition. Cheerfulness ! Do gladly what the Lord 
wants done. My hour is out. One or two words 



74 Sermons and Sayings. 

more and I will quit you at this hour. Paul says: 
" Remembering, without ceasing your work of faith, 
and labor of love and patience of hope, . . . For 
our Gospel came not unto you in word only, but 
also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much 
assurance.^' 

Now, brother, what we want at this meeting is a 
Gospel of power — mark the expression. How will 
you get it ? You know when God wants to launch 
out his laws into force to do work for himself, he 
doesn't count to see how many noses he has got. 
He goes by weight. He puts up scales and weighs 
us. Do you understand it ? There is many a great 
two-hundred-pound professor around this country, 
and you put him on God's scale and he doesn't 
weigh an ounce. He has a great, big, fat body ; 
but if you could pull out his soul, and show it, you 
would say : " What is that starved, shriveled, 
shrunken thing you have got there? Why, it 
hasn't had a square meal in ten years.'^ 



SBRIVLON IV. 

<rR.UST Iisr GOD, AND DO RIGHT. 

"Trust in the Lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in 
the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. Delight thyself also 
in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desires of thy heart. 
Commit thy way unto the Lord ; trust also in him, and he 
shall bring it to pass." — Psa. xxxvii, 3-5. 

THESE three verses which I have read cover 
about all the ground that you and I have ever 
been over or ever need go over until we have 
stepped inside the pearly gates. In each of them 
there is a precious promise, and in each one of 
these promises are conditions. I sometimes think 
we look too much to the promise, and too little at 
the conditions. I believe there is only one uncon- 
ditional promise in the Book, as pertains to life and 
salvation, and that is the promise, you remember, 
God made to Adam w^hen he was wretched and un- 
able to comply with the conditions. God said to 
him in that lost and ruined estate : '^ The seed of 
the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." And 
this put Adam right where he could comply with 
the conditions, and since that all promises in the 
Book are conditional promises. 

You might ask me : " What do you mean by 
conditions?'' These railroads running by, yonder, 
haul passengers, for instance, on certain conditions. 
I know of but two — one is, get your ticket; the 
other is, get aboard. And just as soon as you com- 

75 



76 Sermons and Sayings. 

ply with these conditions^ then all the speed in that 
engine and all the comfort of that coach is yours 
to your destination. And when a man complies 
with the conditions of God's promises, then all the 
power there is in God and all the comfort there is 
in the Divine Spirit is his. And the world must 
learn this fact. It is not so much a question of 
who I am, but to what am I intrusted. There's a 
good deal in that. I start to cross the Atlantic in 
a paper box, and as soon as my box gets wet it 
comes to pieces, and down it goes, and I go down 
with it. If I start in one of those grand ocean 
steamers, then all the strength in her hull, and all 
the power in her boilers, and all the skill of her 
officers is mine, and, thank God, I ^11 never go down 
until she does. If I commit myself to the power 
of the flesh, I am no stronger than the thing I com- 
mit myself to ; but if I commit myself to God, I ^11 
never go down until God does, and he never goes 
down. His course is upward all the way along. 

These promises, as I said, are conditional prom- 
ises, and we would be astonished to know how 
many of these promises there are in the book. 
Some man once compiled all the promises there are 
in the book, and made a book of them, and it was 
very large ; and seeing the advertisement an old 
Christian man wrote to the publishers for a copy of 
" The Promises of God,'' but they answered him 
that the edition v/as all sold, and the book was out 
of print. He buried his face in his hands and cried, 
" ^ The Promises of God ' out of print ! How sad ; ^' 
and he walked into his room and opened his Bible, 



Trust in God. 77 

and the first page was covered with precious prom- 
ises, and he said, "Thank God, this is not out of 
print.^^ This book is full of them, and I sometimes 
think the reason we do n^t realize more out of these 
promises is because we look too little to their con- 
ditions. 

There is not a condition in life but what these 
promises go down to them and up to them and 
around them. There are thirty-two thousand precious 
promises in this book. There is a promise of the 
Father to us all. That 's the precious part of it, 
and one wonders that such a Father could be so 
good to such children as w^e are, and my present 
joy and my eternal hope are based on the fact that 
I can look up in his face, and say, " Father, my 
Lord and my God and Jesus." I feel that God is 
my Father, just as I feel that you are my brother. 
A man who realizes that God is his Father can 
realize in the deepest sense what it is to love his 
neighbor. There is a great deal in that too. We 
are not close enough together in this world. We 
are divided. I do n't mean by rivers — I do n't 
mean by geographical stretches, but I mean that we 
are divided in that every fellow has rigged him up 
a little concern of his own and gets himself off from 
every body else. There 's too much of that. 

These promises are rich to us in proportion as 
we can realize that God is our Father, and that we 
are the children of God, and therefore brothers and 
sisters in Christ. I would scarcely consider my 
sister worthy of the name of " sister " unless she 
was better to me than to herself. I would n't own my 



78 Seemons and Sayings. 

brother if he did any thing that was too good for me. 
I would be ashamed of him, and I would despise my- 
self if the best place in my heart and home did n't 
belong to my brothers and sisters. Good Lord, 
knock out this step-brother and step-sister business, 
and help us to be blood-kin to one another. That 's 
what we want. 

These promises come to us all alike, and they 
come to us as the children of a great Father, and 
they come to us in all conditions of life, and there is 
a promise for you and one for me ; — a promise for me 
in the morning, at noon, and at night; a promise 
for me when I am living and a promise for me 
dying ; a promise for me on earth and in heaven. 
There is not an inch of the way from the hour you 
gave yourself to God until the end, that you do not 
put your foot down on a precious promise that will 
rest your body, and on which you can pillow your 
head at night. 

I appreciate the old woman that took the preacher 
home to dinner one day. She was preparing the 
dinner and the preacher picked up the Bible off the 
table, and was reading it at random, when he noticed 
the letters " T. P.'^ marked often on the margin, and 
when she came in he said, " What does this ^ T. P.* 
stand for that you have here ? '^ She said, " Where do 
you see it, now ? '^ He said, " Why, here, opposite this 
verse, ^ Bread shall be given him.' '' ^^ Why,'' said she, 
" those letters ' T. P.,' written on the margin of my 
Bible there, stand for ^ Tried and Proven;' I have 
tried them, and proven them to be true." And so, 
brethren, we should do likewise. We should have 



Teust in Gob. 79 

our ^' T. P.'s " and be able to say, " I have tried the 
promises of God, and proven them to be true.^' 

These promises come to us in all their righteous- 
ness and fullness, but we had better stop and stand 
a few minutes on their conditions. There is too 
much of this harping on the Divine side in this 
world. Every fellow thinks if the Lord would swap 
sides with him he would run in first rate. We want 
to do the running ourselves, and have God do 
the repairing. We are all perfectly willing to do 
God's part of the thing, but none is willing to do 
his own part of the business. God will never get a 
liking for you. That's your own job, and some of 
you have got a mighty tough job. God will never 
quit drinking whisky for you, and nothing in God^s 
world will keep a man sober who is pouring whisky 
into his hide. Christ and whisky won't stay in the 
same hide, at the same time. 

I know when a man opens his mouth on the 
ruinous effects of whisky he is dubbed a "political 
preacher," a politician drumming for some party. I 
do n't go much on party myself. That 's so. I want 
the political parties of this country to crawl up out of 
the mud and wash themselves from head to foot and 
put on clean clothes before I have any thing to do 
with them. Instead of breaking down the political 
fence and getting in on them, I do n't think I would 
go in if they were to invite me in. 

I was running on politics ? Well, if there is one 
class of people in this country I can not pray for 
it's politicians. These politicians I can not pray 
for. Some power whispers back when I try to, 



80 Sermons and Sayings. 

"Don't talk to me about them." Do you know a 
pious politician in America to-day? Do you ? Rack 
me out one ; I want to see him powerful bad. I 've 
been hunting for one for years. I ain^t on politics, 
but I wanted to say this much. 

I Ve got the profoundest contempt for a man or 
woman that will drink wine, beer, or whisky. It's 
these things that are debauching humanity. And 
another thing I want to say. A good many of you 
are drinking beer or whisky or wine for your health. 
The devil is in it, and he does n't care whether you 
drink it for your health or not. He doesn't care 
how or why you do it — all he wants is that you do 
it. If the Church of God in America would quit 
drinking whisky and vote on this infernal w^hisky 
question they could starve out half the lager-beer 
saloons in the country in six months, and vote the 
balance out of sight, for half of the saloons in Cin- 
cinnati are run by Church members — I do n't say 
Christians. God bless you, a Christian won't drink 
that stuff. I got religion thirteen years ago, and I 
know what a Christian can do. 

There are a dozen preachers here who know 
more than I ever will. They ^re posted on a thou- 
sand things I never even heard of, but I '11 say this 
much; there are two things I know well, one is 
v/hat a fellow has to do to be religious, and the 
other is what he must refuse to do to be religious. 
I know these two things as well as any one, and 
that's about enough for this occasion. 

Look at the conditions. " Commit your way to 
God and trust in him and do good, and you shall 



Teust in God. 81 

dwell in the land, and verily you shall be fed/' 
There is a promise covering earth and time, and 
the wants of the world ; and I am glad to say to 
you that there is not a physical want of my nature 
but what this world stands with outstretched hands 
to give it to me. I \e heard of people starving to 
death, but I never saw them. I never saw the 
coffin of a man who had starved to death. I 've no 
patience with people who starve in this country— 
not a particle. 

If you want a sure successful life in this world 
in every sense, the Bible says : " Trust in the Lord 
and do good.'' How will I get every thing I want 
for my physical man ? " Trust in the Lord and do 
good." Trust in God and do your duty — that 's it 
exactly. There 's a heap of trust in this country. 
There is the trust that makes men stand with hg.nds 
held out a-waiting for God to drop something in. 
He will take every thing you give. That's one 
kind of trust, and that 's about nine-tenths of the 
faith in this country — a catch-all-that-comes faith. 
That 's true. Always begging for something — Lord 
bless you, if that 's your faith. The country is just 
a nation of beggars — that 's the truth about it. 
Yes, it is, too — religious tramps knocking at God's 
door begging. I 've a contempt for this sort of 
thing — I have, too — always on the beg. 

I've children, and when they hang around me 
and beg for something, I do n't give it to them ; but 
when I carry home presents and playthings for the 
little ones, and get there at midnight, the first thing 
that greets my ears when I awake in the morning is 



82 Sebmons and Sayi2ngs. 

not the little fellows in there begging for some- 
thing, but they have got hold of what I have 
brought them, and have found it in the other room. 
And I hear one say : " I Ve dot the best play- 
thing f and another says, " Ain't this nice V and 
" Ain't that a good papa to bring us all these nice 
things?" and as I lie there I think in my heart, 
I 'm glad I brought these things. So God has been 
bringing us things, and all we want to hear is that 
he is around, and we are right after him begging 
for something, and never show gratitude for what 
we have received. Lord, have mercy on us. We 
do n't deserve any more. 

As I said, I do n't go much on the divine side 
of the question ; I look for the assurance that God 
is faithful to what he promises. There are lots of 
preachers who are everlastingly preaching on the 
God side of redemption, on the Divinity of Christ, 
and the authenticity of the Scriptures, and of the 
mysteries of redemption, and the incarnation. La 
me! the devil doesn't want any better joke on a 
preacher than to start him off on that line. If I 
ever see a fellow on the divine side of the Gospel, 
he puts me in mind of those disciples who had 
been fishing all night, and Christ walked up to them 
and said — I can imagine I see them all languid and 
depressed with their ill luck, and hungry — " Cast 
your net on the other side of the ship, over there.'^ 
And they said : ^^ Why, Master, we fished all night 
and got nothing." " Put your net on the other 
side of the ship;" and they did, and it broke with 
fishes. 



Teust in God. 83 

There's many a preacher fishing on the wrong 
side of the ship — on the God side of the question. 
There 's no fish over there. You ask one of them 
how many fish he has caught, and he will say: 
"Well, I haven't caught any, but I have had a lot 
of fine bites." Good Lord, help us to see that the 
fish are on the man side of the Gospel, and attend 
to our own business and let the Lord attend to his. 
That 's determination. Let 's stand on our side of 
the Gospel. Let us try to save souls. It's his 
business to create souls, and let him attend to his 
business. You are the fellows to bring them in, 
and Christ will attend to the rest and see that his 
blood cleanses us from all sin. If I want to dwell 
in the land and be fed of it, all I need do is to trust 
in God and do my duty. We have plenty of trust. 

St. James gave us a clincher at this point when 
he said, '^Show me your faith without your works, 
and I'll show you my faith by my v/orks." That's 
the test of a man's faith. A man is judged by faith 
here, but by works hereafter. Every man must go 
before the judgment bar on the merits of his life. 
"Because I hungered and ye fed me, come in." 
That 's it. Faith without works is dead ! dead ! 
dead ! " Trust God, and do your duty." 

Kind friends, a better race of people never walked 
the face of earth than those of Nashville. I love 
them for their prayers and sympathy. One day 
they tried to impress on me the fact that I ought to 
accept a home in their midst and accept kindnesses 
to me and my family. I said : " I do n't need any 
house. I have a better house now than any of you. 



84 Sermons and Sayings. 

I just live all around here, and when I get there 
your wife gives me a better meal than she gives 
you, and I get a better room than you do ; and the 
fact of the business is, I ^m getting along better than 
you all.^^ Trust in God and do your duty, and 
every thing in this country is wide open. 

I'll tell you what's true. Since I gave my 
heart to God I have had three square meals a day — 
you can tell it by my looks — and plenty of good 
clothes, and have any of you more than that? If 
you have, what's done with it? Get it out here. 
You won't have it long. While you do have it it's 
a heap of trouble. I mixed with some of the old 
rich fellows in one town, and I told 'em I would n't 
swap places forty-eight hours with any of 'em. 

I do n't want to run a three or four-hundred- 
thousand dollar concern for my board and lodging 
and clothes. I 've got too much sense for that. 
John Jacob Astor was walking on Broadway one 
day, and two fellows were walking behind him, and 
one says : "Jim, would you attend to all old Astor'g 
business for your meals and clothes?" Jim said : 
"No; I'm no fool." "Well," says the other, 
"that's all old Astor gets." He owned twenty 
thousand houses in New York, and he could n't live 
in more than one of them to save his life, and I 
live in that many myself, and I get along as well as 
he did. I'm not bothered with the thing. Money 
is like walking-sticks ; one will help you along, but 
fifty on your back will break you down. Money is 
like salt water; the more you get the more you want. 
When you are full you want it worse than ever. 



Trust in God. 85 

If a fellow has ten thousand dollars he wants 
twenty ; if he has twenty he hankers for forty, and 
so on, and when he has a hundred thousand dollars 
he is a great, big, downright lump of selfishness 
from head to foot. If I were to follow the earth's 
plan — I have a wife and little children — I would go 
to work and buy two or three thousand bolts of 
linen, bleaching and domestic; buy five thousand 
cases of shoes, two or three thousand suits of clothes 
for my boys, and build a big warehouse and fill it 
with flour, and lard, and hams, and I am laid up 
then for hard times. I want to have plenty, you 
know. I would rather have my little home than 
have the job of keeping rats and thieves oif the 
building, and I '11 have an easier job. I can get to 
sleep when night comes. There 's a heap in that. 
I met an old fellow in the city some time ago when 
the banks were shaky. He said : ^^ I 'm troubled ; 
the money interests of this country are in an awful 
condition ; and our banks have locked up what we 
have." I said : " Why, I did not know that.'' He 
said : " Why, the papers are full of it." " I never 
read any thing about banks," I answered ; " I 'm not 
interested in that part of the paper." 

Brethren, I'll tell you one thing; you may let 
every bank in the country break, and they won't 
get me for a nickel — I have n't any thing to lose. 
I never want to be afraid some one would steal what 
I had before I wake in the morning. They would n't 
steal it if they knew I had n't more than I wanted. 
Trust God and do right, and you won't starve. 
When I joined the North Georgia Conference I was 



86 Sermons and Sayings. 

bankrupted — I Ve never got over it, in fact — but it 
did n't bother me. 

I was put on a circuit that paid the preacher the 
year before §65. I had a wife and one child, a 
horse and |8 — that was my assets. I took charge 
of the circuit, and the thought never struck me that 
I could not live. I w^as glad I had a place to work 
for Christ. I had to give my note for |120 to get 
a house — that was twice as much as the preacher got 
the year before. An old brother in the Church said 
tome: "You ^11 starve; you can not live on this 
circuit.'' I said, I 'm going to stay here. Well, I 
did my best. I think I preached about five hun- 
dred times a year on circuits when I first started, and 
along about April of the first year my wife said to me : 
" Every thing is out, money and provisions and all.'' 

Brethren, did you ever notice how every thing 
gives out at once, coifee, flour, and so on? I said, 
" Wife, it '11 all come right. The Bible says so, and 
I '11 starve to death if it is n't true. I have done 
my duty the best I could." It was not more than 
an hour after this that a neighboring brother drove 
up with a wagon load of stuflp, and I had more in my 
house then than I ever had since. " Trust in God 
and do your duty." I said to my wife then, " We '11 
stay right here and not say a word, and if you and 
I and the child do starve we'll let'em think w^e 
died of typhoid fever. Whenever you put your trust 
in God and do your duty you '11 come out ahead 
every time." I'm sorry if any brother is uneasy 
about his salary. Do your duty. No work is hard 
if Christ is with us, and will bless us in our work. 



Teust in God. 87 

I wouldn't give the spirit of the old negro 
woman down South for all of the alleged faith of 
some Christians. She was coming down the street 
with a big basket of clothes, singing happily as a 
lark, when a citizen said to her: "Good morning, 
aunty, you seem to be as happy as a lark this 
morning.^' " Well,'' said she, " I is, boss." " Have 
you any money laid up?" "No, boss, I hasn't." 
"A home of your own ?" " No, boss." " Well, how 
do you live ?" " I washes for it," said she. " Sup- 
pose you get sick and couldn't work, what would 
become of you ?" Said the old black woman, cheer- 
fully, " I neber s'poses any thing of de kind, boss. 
The Lord is my Shepherd, and I ain 't going to 
want." I would n't give the spirit of that old 
woman for all the money in America, when it comes 
down to facts. 

I have seen some members of the Church who 
said they were starving, and I thought it was a good 
thing. And I 've seen some preachers nearly starv- 
ing, and I remember a minister who despised the 
way the people had of putting oif punched nickels 
on him. He said it was scandalous. I said: "You 
need n't complain, you 've got the drop on them ; 
you put oif punched sermons on them." That's 
about even. 

"Trust in God and do your duty," that's it 5 
and I 've never yet known a faithful, sacred man to 
want, and that's all we can have in this world — 
what we eat and wear. Said one of these rich fel- 
lows to me, " Jones, do you want us rich men to 
scatter our money all over town ? What would be- 



88 ^ Seemoxs and Sayings. 

come of us?^' I said you ^11 have it back in twelve 
months. All you lose will be only one year's inter- 
est, that's all. They will have it again if it's 
turned loose to-morrow. That's true. 

Affinities sometimes determine some questions. 
'^ Trust in the Lord and do good." Do your duty, 
and this world has never witnessed the fact that 
you should not be cared for in this life. I don't 
mean that a man should turn loose and do nothing 
in the world but sing and pray. It is my religious 
duty to work as well as pray. I never saw a real 
lazy man in my life that I had any confidence in his 
religion. A lazy preacher — of course you have n't 
any in Ohio — is a man God will not have much to do 
with. A fellow gets religion, he gets it in his blood 
and muscle, all over, from head to foot, and it makes 
an industrious man out of him. It '11 make a 
woman industrious. There are women in this world 
who have n't struck a lick of work with their own 
hands for years. They board and lie around and 
about ; all they do is shop, shop, shop. Hell is full 
of such women as that ! That sort can not go to 
heaven. 

I do n't care how much you work — it 's Christian. 
If you're worth a million dollars, what's that 
compared to the wealth of the whole continent? 
And yet you think you are some one if you own a 
few nickels ! They 're the poorest thing a fellow 
was ever loaded down with. You can scatter nickels 
along the way ten feet apart, and you can tole a 
man into hell with them. You know what sort of 
animals you can tole. I 'm not reflecting on any 



Teust in God. 89 

one here, mind you. "I'm just insinuating a 
reference," as the old fellow said. " Get all I can — 
keep all I have,'' is the curse of the world and the 
Church. That's it. 

Take the next promise: "He will give you the 
desires of your heart." That 's a bigger promise 
than the other. Do you know how to get every 
thing you want? "Delight thyself in the Lord." 
There 's too much moping and sad religion in this 
world. It 's not religion — it 's not Christianity. 
That 's what I mean. Many a Christian is moping 
through this world with a long face, as if his father 
were dead, and left him out of his will, without a cent. 
If the Lord God, my Father, had done that I 
couldn't look Avorse than a great many of these 
Christian people. Some of us think it 's a sin to 
laugh. 

One good sister went away the other night and 
said : " I do n't like so much levity." Poor soul, 
I hope you 're much better by this time. If you 
take a tonic to-day you '11 be still better to-morrow. 
" I do n't like so much levity." Call this levity ? 
Crack these jokes one at a time, and you '11 find 
every one of 'em has the red-hot sting of a hornet 
tangled up in it, and you '11 get stung. If you think 
it 's levity it 's because you have a levitous mind. 
There is no levity in this world; so it seems to a 
fellow who has dyspepsia, but not to a naturally 
healthy man. The only levitous thing about it is, 
I hold up the looking-glass, and you people laugh 
at your carcasses reflected there. 

Religion never was intended to make our pleas- 



90 Sermons and Sayings. 

ures less, and in eternal loyalty to God I yield the 
palm to none, and no man shall unchristianize me 
because I do n't mope about like some of these fel- 
lows. If they want dignity wait until I die, and 
I '11 be as dignified as any of you. Just wait. 
What 's a preacher any more than a man ? How can a 
religious man be any more sacred? Tell me that. 
I would n't do a thing at home that I would n't do 
at Church. Want to drag the Church down? No, 
I want to drag home up. Some people are solemn, 
serious, and very pious at Church, and they '11 come 
to Church pious and sleek and say, ^' I do n't like 
that merriment." You ought to have your neck broke. 

The reason why the Church makes no progress 
in this world is because every fellow goes at it as 
if the Lord was working him to death and paying 
him nothing for it. Tliat's about it. If this sad, 
solemn, drooping, dignified piety is what makes your 
religion, I want it before I die, but I don't want 
it until just about a minute before I die — I don't 
want to be loaded with it while I live. If religion 
means I shall mope and cry and must not laugh, it 
would be too short to stretch myself on it, and too 
narrow to curl myself up in it. '^Delight thyself 
in the Lord." Have you ever been to a prayer- 
meeting in this city, or a town prayer-meeting? 

The preacher walks in solemnly and almost 
noiselessly, and the old brethren come in and scat- 
ter around the church as far apart as possible; one 
brother is called to sing and another to pray, and 
then after prayer they'll go home sneakingly and 
call it " growing in grace." O Lord, what a lone- 



Trust in God. 91 

some time they have had. The Lord doesn't go 
within a mile of 'em, and the devil gets in. I 
would as soon pray to make a shade-tree out of my 
walking-stick as try to grow in grace at a meeting 
like that. It's a disgrace to us, and yet the old 
corpse says : "I do n't like such merriment at 
Church, and so much levity at Church. I wish 
you would make us cry." I do n't believe there 's 
a bit of piety in crying. There 's no meanness 
in laughter. I tell you as long as the light of 
my Father's face shines on me I am going to carry 
a smile through the world. Whenever a man can 't 
laugh, he 's in need of a liver medicine. There ^s 
something wrong with him. Many a fellow in this 
country has mistaken a disordered liver for religion — 
a miserable old dose it is to carry. I do n't care 
whether a man laughs or cries at Church. I want 
to know whether he 's a good husband or father 
and a good neighbor. 

I want a religion that will keep me straight, 
and not one that keeps my mouth shut and makes 
me look pious, and enables me to cover up my 
meanness with my looks. The matter with the 
Church is, it is hidebound. Some of you don't 
know what that expression means. It means that 
your hide gets full and wants loosening up, and 
you have got down in your coffin and you need a 
thorough shaking up. 

We have disgusted the world with our religion — 
it 's not attractive to the race, because our religion is 
without joy, gladness, smiles, and songs. I want 
every man to go with a quick step to prayer-meet- 



92 Seemons and Sayings. 

ing, and for their first song let them break out on 
'^All hail the power of Jesus' name'' with a rush, 
and call on some brother to pray with a rush, and 
let him drop on his knees and pray with a rush, and 
let him stand up and sing with a rush, and talk with 
a rush and go home with a rush. 

" Commit yourself to God, and he will bring it 
to pass." That's the biggest promise in the book. 
How will you get all things ? Commit yourself to 
God. So it is with man. You go to a stable and 
get a horse and buggy, and you can drive and 
guide the horse as you please. He wants to go 
everywhere, but will go anywhere he is guided. 
Pull on his left rein, he goes left ; pull on the right, 
he goes to the right ; say " whoa," he stops ; knock 
the lines on his back, and he goes forward. That's 
the way with religion. 

God has lines and guides you by them, but 
sometimes you are balky and w^on't go, and he pulls 
on the lines, and your mouth gets away up under 
your ear, like the old mule that is balky and won't 
go ; and the mule will point his head in the wrong 
direction, but the body goes the way the mule 
goes. Stand here some night, and see that sister 
headed for the theater on Wednesday night. God 
wants her to go to prayer-meeting, and he will pull 
on that line; and the devil wants her to go to the 
theater, and he pulls on that line. 

She's like a dog following two men on the 
street — you can't tell to w^hom the dog belongs. 
But you follow them out to the forks of the road 
where the two men separate, and then you '11 know 



Trust in God. 93 

whom the dog belongs to. So, stand in this city 
on Wednesday night, at the forks of the road, with 
the prayer-meeting here and the theater there, and, 
as she comes along and reaches the forks, then 
you '11 know whose servant she is. If you go to the 
theater "Wednesday or any other night you are the 
devil's dog. The faith that believes every thing, 
and does nothing, is worth nothing to a man. 

Don't criticise me, but criticise yourself. You 
can pick a thousand flaws in my sermon, but look 
out for yourselves. You can 't say any thing worse 
about me than I can about you. If there's any 
thing I despise it's a dull time. I like to see 
things move up. You can not harm me. Some 
men open their mouths to laugh, and you can drop 
a great big brickbat of truth right in. It's the 
biggest thing a man has — a laughing mouth. A 
man can be pious and laugh, but let him not laugh 

at the truth ! 

» 

SAYINGS. 

Theee is not an angel in heaven that is proof 
against bad company. 

The Bible was not given to teach me the way 
the heavens go, but to teach me the way to go to 
heaven. 

A BIG nose is a sign of intellect ; a big mouth, 
character ; a big chin, courage ; and big ears, gen- 
erosity. Some of you pastors ought to get ear- 
fertilizers ; for there are more little 'possum-eared 
Church members in this country than you can count. 



Skrmon v. 

THK LOSS OB^ THE SOULr. 

"For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul ? or what shall a man give in 
exchange for his soul ?" — Maek viii, 36, 37. 

CHRIST JESUS, the author of this question, the 
author of this text, was a wonderful f>reacher. 
He was wonderful in that he was always practical. 
No man could leave an audience to whom Jesus 
had preached, and say : " Well, he discussed some 
theological dogma I was not interested in. He was 
arguing some ecclesiastical question that I felt no 
personal concern for.^^ But Jesus had some things 
to say to every one. Why, when he preached he 
looked over at the farmers present, and said : ^' Listen, 
you farmers, you tillers of the soil. The kingdom 
of heaven is like unto a man going out to sow 
seed.^^ He looked over at the fishermen present, 
and said : " Give me your attention. The kingdom 
of heaven is like a net let down into the water." 
When Jesus preached to the house-carpenters, he 
said: "Give me your ear. Take heed how you 
build.'' And when he preached to the housewives 
present, he said : " Hear ; the kingdom of heaven 
is like unto three measures of meal in which you 
put the leaven, and when you go back you will find 
the whole lump leavened.'' When he preached to 
the merchants and business men present, he looked 
94 



The Loss of the Soul. 95 

them in the face and said : " You men who run on 
profit and loss, what shall it profit you, if you gain 
the whole world and lose your soul ?'' 

This was a practical question eighteen hundred 
years ago ; it is a very practical question now. 
This country is running on profit and loss. This is 
a nation of bargain-makers ; a nation of traders. 
We commence trading in this country about the 
time we begin to talk. Little boys will swap knives ; 
little girls will trade dolls. We begin to hunt up 
bargains as soon as we learn to walk. The mer- 
chants who draw the most customers are the mer- 
chants who put up "Big Bargains'' in great letters 
over their store doors. Every one is hunting 
bargains. 

This is a question, brethren, practical now — it 
reaches every body. Why ? It is true. You can 't 
get a Congressman to speak on any thing except the 
tariff; and that 's the only difference now between 
the two great national parties — the tariff. And that 
question has got to be a sort of differentiated differ- 
ence. Why, if a daughter is going to marry to- 
morrow, the would-be father-in-law does n't measure 
the to-be son-in-law's brain force, nor his nervous 
energies, but he measures his pocket-book and his 
capacity for making money. If you want to get a 
big collection now in the Churches out of the pockets 
of God's people, all you need to do is to convince 
them beyond reasonable doubt that God will give 
them two dollars for every one they put in the con- 
tribution box; if you do that, you'll get a whopping 
big collection on that occasion. 



96 Sermons and Sayings. 

This is the question now of all questions — the 
question of profit and loss^ and this question comes 
home to every conscience here to-night. You men 
who add up your debit and credit columns day 
after day, stop a moment and ask yourselves this 
question : " What shall it profit a man if he gain 
the whole world and lose his soul ? ^^ I believe it 
was Talmage who said once : " A man is very un- 
wise to make an exchange like this — his soul for the 
world. ^' He said there is n't a piece of property in 
the world, in an eternal sense, for which you can 
get a deed, or that you can get any insurance upon. 

If I were a merchant in Cincinnati and had ac- 
cumulated my fortune and decided ^' now I will buy 
me a beautiful farm and move out into the country, 
to recuperate and rest at my ease the balance of my 
life; I will find me just such a plantation as suits 
me — its mansions, its out-buildings, its bottom-lands, 
its table-lands, its woodlands, its brooks, its springs, 
its all; here is the place that suits me exactly ;'' 
but before a wise man will count down any money 
for it, he will go to the Books of Deeds and Mort- 
gages and Liens to see if there is any thing against 
that property. No man will count his money down 
for a piece of property until he is certain he can get 
a clean title. Before you count down your money 
and make the trade and enter it in writing and take 
possession of this property, suppose you look around. 
You may take the property, and before you are in 
possession of it ten minutes old death may come 
along and say, ^^ Off these premises," and off you go. 
How many men in this world have I seen just fixed 



The Loss of the Soul. 97 

up for living well; their home just finished and 
furnished nicely and every thing arranged for com- 
fort and long life and old age, and in just ten 
months after they have finished their place, black 
crape was hung on the front door knob and the 
hearse was brought up before their residence. How 
much of that thing have you seen, my brother? 

In my own town I can remember almost a dozen 
places which men have arranged, and rearranged 
for comfort and ease, and just after every thing was 
well arranged, death came along, and there was a 
coffin in the house, with the shroud, and the weep- 
ing wife, and the crying children that came instead 
of peace and enjoyment. If I could build a palace 
and so arrange its doors and windows that death 
could not come in on me, I might make a trade like 
this; but death comes in here with fearful grief, 
and enters the palace and the hovel alike, and there 
is no power that can do away with it. 

Suppose you had a piece of property and you 
wanted it insured, and you asked the insurance 
agent to come up and see and examine the premises. 
The insurance agent starts up with you, and when 
you get to the front gate you see flames bursting 
out of the basement or the cellar of that building. 
The insurance agent turns round to you and he 
says, " Good-bye, I can H insure that property, it is 
already on fire down in the basement.^' What about 
the insurance on this old world ? Geologists tell us 
it is on fire away down in the basement, and Ve- 
suvius and ^tna are but the chimneys to the con- 
flagration below, and the molten lava flows year 



98 Sekmons and Sayings. 

after year and never ends; God's word for it, this 
old world shall be burned up. Astronomers have 
swept their telescopes across the skies, and have 
told us that a dozen worlds have disappeared in the 
last few decades ; they tell us, at first they look like 
other worlds, then they turn a deep blood-red, showing 
that they are on fire ; and then they turn to an ashen 
color, showing that they have been burned to ashes ; 
and then at last they disappear completely from all 
human eyes. 

What, give my soul for a piece of property I 
can't get a title to; and if I could get a title to it, 
I can 't get any insurance on it ! Another thing : 
In our Southern city of Atlanta, on one of our pret- 
tiest streets, there is a very beautiful lot. Go there 
and ask the real-estate agent : " Why does n't some 
one build on this lot ?'' and he will tell you : '^ Sir, 
because every man that ever had any thing to do 
with that property has got into trouble about it. 
He buys a lawsuit.'' It is as true and as deep as 
nature, that every man that ever had any thing to 
do with this old Avorld has got into trouble about 
it. The most miserable man in this city to-night, 
is the man that has got millions of dollars. I do n't 
know who he is, nor where he lives, and practically, 
by the grace of God, I never want to know who 
he is. 

Some one said : " God showed what he thought 
of riches by the people he gave them to." I do n't 
know whether there is any thing in that or not. 
Many a man is wallowing in luxury and wealth in 
this world, many a man who has given himself up 



The Loss of the Soul. 99 

to money making and money accumulating, and en- 
joying himself — for what? I say: "You old fellow, 
you're a fattening hog that doesn't kuow what he 
eats corn for/' In trouble about it? I can say 
this much : Here 's one man that was born poor, 
and raised poor, but I have held my own, and I 
have been at it so long I 've become used to it, and 
it doesn't hurt me a bit in the world — poverty 
doesn't. That's the plain truth about it. 

I '11 tell you another thing : One of our million- 
aires down in Georgia was a liberal man in the 
highest sense of that word, and when disaster 
brought him down to pennilessness and nothingness 
in finances, he said, " I went into my room and fell 
down on my knees and prayed, ' Lord God, explain 
to me why my money has all been swept away. I 
did my duty I thought; I have divided with the 
poor and given to the Church, and now it is all 
gone. Lord, Lord, explain it to me. I am in trouble 
about it.' I opened my Bible on my knees, and my 
eyes fell instantly on this passage, * It is easier for 
a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for 
a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.' 
When I read this I just clapped my hands and said 
gladly to God, ^I will have infinite life if I die a 
pauper.' " 

You give a man much money these days and 
he gets very independent of God ! That 's true. I 
am surprised at a man getting so stuck up with a 
little money too. Here's a fellow worth one hun- 
dred thousand dollars ; he thinks he 's rich. Here 's 
a man that's worth five hundred thousand dollars; 



100 Sermons and Sayings. 

he thinks he's rich. Suppose you are worth five 
millions, what's that compared to the city of Cin- 
cinnati? Suppose you own the whole city of Cin- 
cinnati, what 's that compared to New York City ? 
Suppose you own both cities, what 's that compared 
to the whole United States of America? And sup- 
pose you own all America, what 's that compared to 
Europe, with all its wealth ? And suppose you own 
the whole world, and every bit of it is yours, you 
could put two such worlds as this in your pocket, 
and go up to the Dog Star and stay there all night, 
even then you would n^t have enough to pay your 
lodging. What are you cutting up about? Put- 
ting on airs with a couple of thousand dollars. " What 
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world 
and lose his own soul ?" 

Brethren, hear me ! A man's wealth does n't 
consist in the abundance he possesses. I tell you, 
the richest man in this city, in my opinion, is the 
man who is contented with his lot. "Godliness 
with contentment is great gain." 

What does a man want with a pile of money 
when he has to work the life out of him to make 
it, and has to work twice harder to keep it after he 
does make it? What does he want with it? It's 
just like what you hear when an old millionaire 
dies. You can hear one neighbor of his meet 
another on the street and say : " Mr. So-and-so, the 
millionaire, has just died, and left all his money, 
by his will, to the bar-keepers of the town." "Why, 
what do you mean ?" says the fellow. "Well," says 
the neighbor, " he did n't do it directly, but he did 



The Loss of the Soul. 101 

it indirectly ; he left it to the boys, and the bar- 
keepers will soon get it all/' 

Mark, fathers, who hear me to-night. Look to 
the interests of your soul and the interests of your 
children. Let me say this to you : " If I could 
provide a little competency for my wife, who has 
given me and my children all her life, I would n't 
leave a dollar in this world to any one of my chil- 
dren ; if they 're any good they won't need it, and 
if they ain't, leaving it to them will make them of 
no account." That's logic, brethren, as resistless 
as eternity. You can 't dodge it. Many a fellow 
in this country says, " I ain't making this money 
for myself, I'm just laying it up for Sallie and the 
children." Yes, and you will give your life for 
money, and hoard it, and lay it up for Sallie and 
the children, but if you could see Sallie and the 
children six months after you are dead — Sallie with 
her new teeth and the boys with their fine turn- 
outs, you 'd be surprised to see how well Sallie and 
the children get along without you. You would that. 

I heard of one old man whp gave his life for 
money, and spent his time getting money and pil- 
ing it up for his wife and children ; and the preacher 
told me he w^as visiting at the house about six 
months after the old man died, and they put him 
in one of the garret-rooms. When he went in he 
saw a picture, with its face to the wall, standing 
over in the corner, and he went to it and turned 
it around, and saw it was the old man's picture. 
They put it away oif there, and turned its face to 
the wall. That's a pretty bad state of things, isn't 



102 Sermon's and Sayings. 

it ? And that old man had given his life, literally, 
to money-getting. Let's see something bigger than 
a dollar, and something better than stocks and 
bonds. I will tell some of you here to-night, you 
may be kneeling on your bonds, but I am kneeling 
on the promises of God, and I'll be standing up 
when you Ve been swept down forever. 

Do n't any body say I 'm talking against riches ; 
I ain't; I am glad we have rich men, but I despise 
an old rich hog. I do. I am glad of every wealthy 
man in this country. A great many think that 
money is the root of all evil. That's a mistake. 
The Book never said that. It says the love of it is 
the root of all evil; and there are more poor men 
going to hell for the love of money — on the prin- 
ciple that white sheep eat more than black sheep — 
because there are more of 'em. 

I 've gone into cities and looked at the large 
stores, gotten up, engineered, and run on the brain 
of one man ; and I 've said, ^^ I do n't begrudge that 
man his money, for, I declare, a man that takes a 
business like that on his mind has n't a minute in 
the year to give to God." That 's true ! " They 
that will be rich fall into divers temptations and 
pierce themselves through with many sorrows. It 
is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a 
needle" — and that means the arch simply of the gate, 
and the only way a camel can get through at all is 
to unload his burden off his back. 

One of the old millionaires down our way sent 
for me once, and he said: "Mr. Jones, I want to 
talk to you. I have given my heart to God and 



The Loss of the Soul. 10.^ 

my hand to the Church." I said: "Old brother, 
you have done all that, you have given your soul 
to God, but you will find it is a thousand times 
easier to manage your soul than all this money you 
have piled up here. You will break into hell about 
that sure. You ^d better begin to stir your stumps 
and give some of 'that money away pretty soon, for 
you ^re right smart behind with God." 

I am not talking against money. The best man 
this world ever saw was the richest man, and that 
man was Abraham. He could have left one of his 
servants more than Yanderbilt left all his children, 
and yet Abraham was one of the best saints this 
world ever saw. Thank God for every rich man 
who loves God and uses his money wisely. Do n^t 
say now I 'm preaching against riches. 

I ^11 tell you one thing : Riches you get wrongly 
will not only curse you, but it will curse your fam- 
ily after you are dead and gone. I was talking this 
evening about the ill-gotten gains of some man in At- 
lanta. A poor family was found by a reporter 
starving to death, and nearly frozen in the late cold 
spell, and when they came to find the cause, it was 
learned that they were making garments for a house 
in Atlanta that was paying them fifteen cents a 
dozen. That sort of money will turn into brim- 
stone, and you will carry enough brimstone to hell 
with you to burn you forever, if that ^s the way 
you get your money. I will tell you another thing : 
Fifteen cents a dozen for making garments is the 
essence of communistic fire that will burn this 
country up some of these days. 



i04 Sermons and Sayings. 

" What shall it profit a man if he gain this whole 
world and lose his own soul V^ A man ought never 
to buy or sell any thing without remembering that 
he has got a soul in his body to be saved or lost. 
What will it profit a man now if he gain the whole 
world? My brethren, we do not expect to get 
much of it; be as lucky as we may, we can not 
accumulate much. There is a certain class in this 
world I have a great contempt for. We have pau- 
pers down in our country, and we have what we 
call poor-houses, where we put our paupers, the old 
and decrepit and the helpless that have no home, 
nor board, nor friends, and we furnish a house and 
a home for that sort; but the finest specimen of a 
pauper that I ever saw was a young man twenty- 
five years old, who had no money and no religion, 
no stocks and bonds and no hope of heaven, no 
house nor horse, and no peace with God through 
Jesus Christ. There is the finest specimen of a 
pauper that this world ever saw. That tall fellow 
back there is serving the devil for nothing and 
boarding himself, or rather he is making his poor 
old mother board him. You are the meanest 
wretch this earth ever saw. 

Men supported by their wives who sit at the 
needle sixteen hours every day to support a drunken 
husband, or a no-account son ; that is serving the 
devil every minute for nothing, and making his 
poor, helpless wife or mother support him. O, 
how poor is a character like that. I think when a 
man gets to where he won't support himself, and his 
wife has to do it, it is time then for the decent 



The Loss of the Soul. 105 

people of that community to tie a rock about his 
neck and drop him gently in the river, and say 
nothing about it ; do n't mention it. And, I ven- 
ture the assertion, you have a thousand just such 
cases in this city. I hate to see a man boarding 
with his wife when his wife is rich ; but, O my ! 
how I do hate it if he 's boarding with his wife 
when she is poor, and has to work for a living. 

What will it profit a man if he gain the whole 
world — if he gain all there is in it, and lose his 
soul? O, how inexpressibly foolish it is in a man 
to get none of the world and then die a pauper, 
and be a pauper in hell for all eternity. I said 
many a time, if there are any people in this world 
that I do want to be religious, it is the poor white 
folks and negroes. Many of them never have any 
thing much in this world, and then they die and go to 
hell, eternal paupers. It is the most awful thought 
I can conceive of. Those old fellows who have 
carriages and horses, and drink twelve-dollar cham- 
pagne all their lives, they can afford to be damned, 
if any body can ; but those fellows who have never 
had any thing here can not afford it. 

The Lord save the poor people of this city, if 
those who have plenty won't be saved ! I am in 
for the poor people of the city. God save them. 
I hope they will come and fill every chair and pew 
in this hall. I have known some preachers, and 
all they wanted in the world was just to see one 
old major or old colonel come in and take his seat, 
and they would not look at any body else except the 
old major or the old colonel and see whether they 



106 Sermons and Sayings. 

were impressing him or not. Look here, you have 
found one preacher at least who do n't go much on 
these colonels and judges and majors. Who are 
they ? The old red-nosed colonel and the old foul- 
mouthed major, I would n't wipe my feet on one at 
my front door. I have never seen one that was of 
much account after you got him. What do you 
want with him ? His habits have been so bad, and 
his life has been so crooked, that when he joins the 
Church he has just to stand and fight the devil all the 
time, and if he stops only long enough to spit on his 
hands the devil has him all at once. Now, I am 
not after them. Let those other preachers, if they 
want to, run after the old colonel and the old major 
and the judge; but God give me the blood and 
muscle and the brain of this country to be relig- 
ious, and the blood and muscle and brain that 
have not been debauched in sin for forty years. 

"What shall it profit a man if he gain this 
whole world and lose his own soul?'' Now, breth- 
ren, when we consider this world, it is a glorious 
world. Thank God for such a world to live in for 
threescore years and ten. If I want water, three- 
fourths of the earth's surface is covered with water ; 
if I want light, I have the meridian splendors of 
the sun by day, and at night he sprinkles the 
heaven like a swarm of golden bees ; if I want 
flowers, well — 

" Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its fragrance on the desert air." 

If I want books, the millions of shelves laden with 
precious works bid me come and read ; if I want 



The Loss of the Soitl. 107 

friends, there are fourteen hundred millions of beings 
around me, and God says take them every one for 
your friends ; if I want bread, hundreds of millions 
of acres of the harvest field wave towards me and 
tell me. Here come and satisfy your hunger; if I 
want gold, the bowels of the earth are full of gold ; 
if I want any thing that man could desire, and 
that sense could ask for, this world says. Here it 
is, come and take it. And I know that God has 
prepared a grand world for us hereafter, because he 
has made such a world for us to live down here in 
a few days. 

But, brother, now you begin to talk about 
eternity, and this world is n't worth much. Here 
is a picture in London: A man — an eminent 
banker — was stricken with meningitis; he sent for 
the doctor ; the doctor came and examined him, 
and said to him : " You have meningitis ; three 
hoars and you are gone." The banker turned his 
whitened face up into the face of the doctor, and 
said: "Have you spoken the truth?'' "Yes, I 
have spoken the truth." " Well, doctor, if you will 
keep me alive until to-morrow morning I will give 
you a hundred thousand pounds." Half a million 
dollars ! The doctor looked at him and said : " I have 
prescriptions to give and remedies to administer, 
but I have no time to sell. Time belongs to God." 
That shows you about what this world is worth 
when a man comes to die. 

Look at Cornelius Vanderbilt. He had just said 
to William, " I leave you seventy-five millions," 
and to his other children and wife twenty-five mil- 



108 Seemons Ais^D Sayings. 

lions. Here is a round one hundred millions. " I 
am the money king of America, and I give and 
bequeath this to my children." And then he turned 
over on his bed and looked on the face of his Chris- 
tian wife and said, " Come, wife, now you can sing 
to me, ^ Come, ye sinners, poor and needy, weak 
and wounded, sick and sore.' " The money king 
of America lay dying a pauper upon his bed. 
Call that success? God help me never to succeed 
that way. 

If I have one thing to be grateful for it is this, 
for when my father bid me good-bye he simply said, 
" Son, son, make your father the promise that you 
will meet him in a better land ; " and I shook his 
hand and told him good-bye; and my father did not 
leave a nickel in my hand. I believe if he had left 
me twenty thousand or fifty thousand dollars that I 
would have gone immediately and invested it in a 
through ticket for hell, and that I would be there 
this minute. Recollect, fathers, if your children 
are of any account they do n't need your money, 
and if they are of no account every dollar you give 
them will sink them down ! down ! ! down ! ! ! 

Now a moment or two and I am done. We 
look at the other side of this question. I have 
nothing to say against this world. Be comfortable ; 
have your good home if you can ; have comfort all 
around you. God has put enough here for every 
one of us to have a good home and be comfortable. 
But, my good brother, always look for eternity. 
Get ready ; prepare, prepare. I can not afford to 
give my soul to this world. No, sir; no, sir. My 



The Loss of the Soul. 109 

soul ! my soul ! Why, sir, hear me a moment on 
this, my soul. The time will come when my soul 
will take my body and lay it down just as a boy 
throws down his ball when he is tired playing 
with it. 

The time will come when my soul will take my 
body and lay it aside, just as you have laid aside some 
old implement about your house or farm that you 
won't use any more. My soul! The time will 
come in the future when wife and children shall 
gather around my dying couch, and the doctors 
press their way into the circle, and my soul, just a 
moment will watch and wait, and then it will push 
the doctor back from my dying couch and overleap 
the circle of friends around my bed, and above stars 
and moon it goes, and overvaults the very throne 
of God. 

My soul ! My soul ! Shall I give it in ex- 
change for this world ? No, sir ; no, sir. 

A father in one of the Southern cities said to 
me : " Two of my boys are dissipated, and, O, my 
money will ruin my boys, and I know it." Said 
I : " You say you 've got money enough to ruin 
them both?'' "Yes." "And you are certain it will 
ruin them?" Said he: "Yes." Said I, "I'll tell 
you how to dodge that thing." Said he: "How?" 
" Well," said I, " give me this afternoon $20,000 
a-piece of those two boys' money for the orphan 
home out here, and you go home to-night and say 
to Tom and Henry, ' I have given Sam Jones $20,- 
000 of each of your money, and the very next time 
you get drunk I am going to give him $40,000 of 



110 Sermons and Sayings. 

each of your money; and further, on your third 
drunk, I will make him a deed for that orphans' 
home for every dollar I have got.' And/' said I, 
" you will straighten them boys right out — you will 
that." And before my money should damn my 
children, I say to you to-night, I would give it all 
to the orphan homes of the country. Well, as I 
said, I told him what he should do w4th his money, 
and, strange to say, he never gave me a cent. I 
am afraid he will be in the pit before his boy is. 

You can go down among the rich bottoms of 
the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers and there you 
find the most impure water; and you find the most 
malarious atmosphere in the rich bottoms of the 
Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. You can go up 
among the old red hills of Georgia, and the clearest 
sparkling water you ever saw gurgles up through 
the old red clay, and the sweetest atmosphere blows 
over the old red hills of Georgia. Among the rich 
of this earth is the most corruption, and the most 
wickedness, and the most guilt. Among the poor 
of the earth you will find the sweetest virtues and 
the noblest characters. Let us live among the poor. 
Let us have a good atmosphere and good water. 

And I will tell you, brother, that when a man 
gets drunk on money he is gone. You preachers 
are not candid with him. You do not tackle him 
as you should. When an old fellow gets drunk 
with whisky his friends go to him and say, " Look 
here, old fellow, you are going to the devil. I wish 
you would quit and keep straight." His wife pleads 
with him. The minister pleads with him. Every 



The Loss of the Soul. Ill 

body pleads with him. But when a fellow gets 
drunk with money, bless you, his wife does not say 
any thing about it. She enjoys the "creetur" her- 
self; she does not say, " Husband, you are going 
to perdition. ^^ The preacher does not tackle him; 
he is afraid to. There 's many a man in this town 
drunk with money. Have you, brethren, been up 
to tell him "You are drunk with money, and the 
devil will get you?^' You never tackle such men. 
You just say, "I want the favor of these old rich 
fellows, because I know if I bother them they will 
get mad with me and neutralize my action and 
neutralize my power, and I can not do any thing;'* 
and you think " The best thing to do is to let the 
old fellow alone. I do n't want to antagonize him, 
but just make him pay his way along.'' O, sir, 
when a man gets drunk on money nobody bothers 
him then. He just goes on and on, and to per- 
dition he goes forever. 

" What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul?" We will make this 
discussion a little more practical and bring it down 
to where we have a practical interest in it in every 
sense, I want to say to you right now, I do not 
know what it is keeps you from being a Christian — 
you men sitting there. I can not tell what it is 
keeps you out of the Church and away from God, 
but I will say that whatever it is, whether it is 
a dance, or a dram, or licentiousness, I do not care 
what it is that keeps you away from Christ and 
out of the Church, you can put all those things 
together in one common pile and point to the pile 



112 Sermons and Sayings. 

and say ; " That is the price I put on my immor- 
tality. That is the price I have sold it for." 

That young man says : ^^ I would join the Church, 
but I love to dance. '^ That young lady says, ''I 
would join the Church, but I love to dance.'' 
Well, young lady, go on. We will say that you 
go to 200 balls — that is a big allowance, isn't it? — 
and that you dance hundreds of sets. By and by 
you die without God and without hope, and down 
into the flames of despair you go forever ; and as 
you walk the sulphurous streets of damnation you 
can tell them : " I am in hell forever, it is true, but 
I danced 400 times, I did." Now, won't that be a 
consolation ? 

That man out there says : " I want to join the 
Church, but preachers think a man ought not to 
take a dram and be a member of the Church." 
Supposing, brother, that you roll out forty barrels 
of the best Bourbon in the United States and drink 
it, every drop, and then die and go to perdition. 
You can tell them in hell : " I am in hell forever, 
it is true, but I drank forty barrels of the best 
Bourbon before I got here." That will be a con- 
solation, won't it. That's remuneration, isn't it? 

What do you want to dance for, young lady? 
Of what use is it to you? If I had to marry a 
dozen times— and I am like the Irishman who said 
he hoped he would not live long enough to see his 
wife married again — if I had to marry a dozen 
times, I would never go to a ball-room to get my 
wife. Do you hear that? I used to dance with 
the girls, but when I wanted to marry I did not 



The Loss of the Soul. 113 

go to the ball-room to get my wife. Many a fellow 
got a good one in the ball-room, and many a fellow 
did n't. God gives a man a good wife and some- 
body else gives him a bad one. What good does 
it do you to be able to dance? Take the best girl 
in this town after her family is reduced to a fear- 
ful crisis by her father's business reverses. Now 
they are poor and that girl must earn a living. I 
will introduce her to a dozen of the leading citizens 
of the town, and give her a worthy recommendation 
in every respect. She is just what every body would 
want as a music teacher, as a clerk, or in any other 
capacity ; but let me add as a postscript to the rec- 
ommendation, '^ She is a first-class dancer,'' and that 
will knock her out of every job she applies for in 
this world. And so with every sin. And I de- 
clare to you to-night, that the thing that keeps us 
away from God and out of the Church, that is the 
price we put on our soul. 

There is a man. He says: "I would be relig- 
ious if it were not for so and so," and I never 
think of this that I do not think of an incident in 
which a husband sat by his wife at a revival meet- 
ing. When the penitents were asked to come to 
the altar he was asked by his wife, "Come, won't 
you give yourself to God?" He shook his head 
and went home. That night she said to her hus- 
band, "I saw you were affected. I wish you had 
given your heart to God." He said, '' Wife, I can 
not be a Christian in the business I am in." She 
said: "I know that." He was a liquor dealer. 

And she added : " Husband, I want you to give up 

10 



114 Sekmons and Sayings. 

your business and give your heart to God." He 
said : " Wife, I can not afford it/' '' Well/' she said, 
'*ho\v ranch do you clear every year on whisky?" 
'^ Well," he said, ^^ my net profits are about two 
thousand dollars a year." She asked : " Husband, 
how long do you reckon you will live to run that 
business?" "Twenty years in the natural expecta- 
tion of things." " How much is twice twenty thou- 
sand dollars ?" " Forty thousand dollars." " Forty 
thousand dollars? Now, husband, if you could 
get forty thousand dollars in a lump, would you sell 
your soul to hell for that sum ?" He said : " No, 
wife ! no ! I '11 close out my business in the morn- 
ing, and I will give my heart to God right now. 
I would not sell my soul for four thousand million 
dollars." O, that you all could see what keeps you 
out of the Church and from God. That is the 
price you have placed on your immortal soul. 

Now, a word in conclusion. The soul — that is 
the other thing. There is the world and here is 
the soul. Now what ? My soul with its immortal 
interest ; my soul that shall live forever ; my soul 
that will shake off this body by and by, and lay it 
aside as a tired child does its toys ; my soul that shall 
throw this body down and fly away from it ; shall 
I give my immortal soul for this world? No, sir, 
I can not do that. What then? I will give my 
soul to Christ. He is worthy of it; he died to 
save it. 

Yonder is a parliament. Adam has just fallen 
and subjected the whole race to death, and now the 
reverberating thunders of God's wrath are heard 



The Loss of the Soul. 115 

athwart the whole moral universe, and the announce- 
ment is made in that parliament, " Adam — man has 
fallen. The great federal head of the race has sinned 
and fallen ; '^ and a voice from the great I am 
spoke out, " Who will take man^s redemption on 
his shoulders and bring him back to life?^^ I im- 
agine the archangel standing up in that presence and 
shaking his snowy wings, and saying : ^' This task 
is too great for me." I imagine Gabriel might 
stand up and say, "I shall blow the trumpet that 
will wake the dead, but this task is too great for 
me." But all at once there was One who stood up 
in that presence and said : " I will take man^s re- 
demption on my shoulders." And the angels began 
to wonder, and it has been the cause of increasing 
wonder ever since that he should become the Re- 
deemer; that he should become man that he might 
redeem the race and be our Savior. 

Brother, you read some years ago about a ship 
in the Atlantic Ocean that sprung a leak away 
down in the bottom of her hull. The announce- 
ment that the ship has sprung a leak is made by 
the captain, and the pumps are got to work ; but 
they will not pump out the water as fast as it 
enters by the leak. The only hope for the safety 
of the vessel is that some one will risk his life in 
order to stop the leak. Volunteers were asked for, 
and one man spoke up, " I will go down and stop 
the leak." He went down and down — to the upper, 
then the lower, and then the third deck, and then 
he reached down into the water and worked there 
repairing the leak until he became perfectly ex- 



116 Sermons and Sayings. 

hausted. Then the pumps began to work, and by 
and by the old ship grew lighter, and the captain said : 
" The leak is stopped, but let us go down and see 
about our friend/^ They went down to the third 
deck and saw his body floating on the water. They 
brought him up and embalmed his body, and when 
land was reached they carried it ashore and buried 
it. And the spot was marked by a tombstone on 
which was the epitaph : 

" This man gave his life that all of us might live." 
And the names of those he saved were all engraved 
below. And they bless the memory of that man 
and say : ^' If he had not died we should have been 
lost.'' 

And yonder is the old ship Humanity, and now 
the waves of God's wrath and judgment begin to 
pitch and toss her, and drive her on the rocks, and 
she is about to go down forever, when the Son of 
God sees her, and I see him come from the shining 
shores of heaven as swift as the morning light, and 
thrown his arms around this old sinking ship. She 
carries him under three days and nights, and 
he brings her to the surface on the third morning; 
and then God grasps the stylus and signs the 
Magna Charta of man's salvation, and then at the 
blessed moment it is w^'itten : ^' Whosoever believeth 
in the Son of God shall not perish, but have everlast- 
ing life." I will give my life to Christ ; he gave 
his life for me, and he is worthy of it. 

Down South, before the war we used to put a 
slave on the block and sell him to the highest bid- 
der. Sometimes he would run away, and we could 



The Loss of the Soul. 117 

not get him on the block, but we would sell him on 
the run. " How much for him running away V^ 
Well, brother, when God Almighty turned this 
world over to Jesus Christ, he turned it over on 
the run, running away from God, running aAvay to 
hell and death, and the Lord Jesus Christ came as 
swift as the morning light, and overtook this old 
world in her wayward flight, threw his arms around 
her, and said : '' Stop, stop, let us go back to God. 
Let us go back." 

O Jesus Christ, help every man here to-say: 
" I will go back. I have strayed long enough. I 
will go back now.'' Will you, brother ? God help 
every man to say : " This night I have taken my 
last step in the wrong direction, and have turned 
round." That is just what God wants sinners to 
do — to turn round — to turn round. Will you to- 
night say: "God being my helper, I will stop; 
I will turn my attention to heavenly things and 
eternal things ; I will look after my soul, if I starve 
to death?" Will you do that ? 



Skrmon VI. 

CORNEI^IUS, A DKVOUT IVIAN. 

There was a certain man in Cesarea, called Cornelius, a 
centurion of the band called the Italian band, a devout man, 
and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much 
alms to the people and prayed to God always. — Acts x, 1, 2. 

THE first century of tlie Christian era produced 
some of the most remarkable characters of this 
world's history, and one of them was this heathen 
man, Cornelius. His character was remarkable in 
that it was symmetrical. It was well rounded. It 
presented a perfect whole. A perfectly educated 
will is one which says to the Divine Will, ^^ Thou 
orderest, I will.'' ^^ Thou commandest not, I Avill 
not." In other words, a perfectly educated will is 
a will in perfect harmony with the will of God. 
We Christian people have a great deal to say about 
crosses and sacrifices and losses. You know what a 
cross is ? Now, I will tell you where the Christian 
finds his cross — when God's will is one way and his 
will another. Now, there ^s your cross. But when 
you whip your will around into a parallel line with 
the will of God — now the cross is all gone — and you 
say : " The joy of my heart is to do the will of God." 
Delight yourselves in the will of the Lord and he 
will give you your desires, because your will is in 
perfect harmony with the will of God. 

Character is but the soul, in all its phases, in 
118 



Cornelius, a Devout Man. 119 

perfect harmony with the will of God. Religion is 
loyalty to God. Religion puts me in harmony with 
the will of God, so that whenever the chords of my 
heart are touched by the Divine fingers, there is 
music that would charm an angePs ear. When I 
visit the sick I get the sweetest music of earth from 
my being, and every thing in me is set in perfect 
harmony with the will of God. Character is the 
result of the harmony of forces. There is a world 
of beauty in harmony. I once sat in the parlor of 
a friend's house, and his oldest daughter sat at the 
piano running her fingers over the keys. To the 
right of her stood her brother putting a banjo in 
perfect tune with the chords of the piano. To the 
left was a sister with a guitar, and near by was an- 
other brother tuning a violin. All these instru- 
ments were put in perfect harmony with the chords 
of the piano, and when all commenced to play to- 
gether, there was music that would have charmed 
the heavenly hosts. When a man is in harmony 
with every thing, if he is in harmony with God's 
will, he loves all that God loves, and hates all that 
God hates ; and if he is not in harmony with God's 
will, he is out of harmony with all that God loves, 
and in harmony with all that God hates. If you 
are in harmony with God's will, you will love every 
thing God loves, and hate every thing that God 
hates. You love the right and hate the wrong, and 
you are godlike in character. 

Cornelius's character, as I said a moment ago, 
was wonderful and striking in that it was symmet- 
rical, and now, to-day, I propose to present this 



120 Seemons and Sayings. 

portrait of this heathen man to this congregation. 
It is the Scriptural portrait of this man, and when 
I look at it and then take my eyes away for a mo- 
ment, I am ashamed of myself and of every man 
on the face of the earth. I am, for I tell you after 
the blessings of 1,900 years of Christ and all that 
accrues by reason of God^s goodness to the race, as 
it marches on, this world does not present, in the 
noontide blaze of the nineteenth century privileges, 
such a character as this heathen man Cornelius. 
" Cornelius, a devout man,'' — that is the first thing 
that God tells us about this man. He was a devout 
man. This term devout is a very significant one. 
It is a broad term. We have various adjectives and 
epithets by which we describe men. Sometimes we 
say he is a zealous man. Sometimes we say he is 
an earnest man. Sometimes we say he is an intel- 
lectual man. Sometimes we say he is a very humble 
man. Sometimes that he is very prayerful. Some- 
times we say he is a very generous man, a forgiving 
man ; but when inspiration tell us Cornelius was a 
devout man, it covers the whole ground in one word, 
and says that he was noble, and generous, and true, 
and all that makes the character of the Lord Jesus 
Christ lovely in the sight of man — a well rounded 
character. Cornelius was a devout man, or, in other 
words, a thoroughly religious man. I do n't care 
where he lives, whether in Europe, Asia, or Africa, 
such a man is worth his weight in gold in any com- 
munity. 

What a man does is the test of what a man is. I 
frequently ask. What is Mr. So-and-so worth ? And 



Cor:n^elius, a Devout Man. 121 

some man with only the statistics of the tax-books 
before him, says he is worth three hundred thou- 
sand dollars. That is the only way you can tell 
what a man is worth — by going to the tax-books — 
and then, generally, you can multiply that by five 
before you reach it. I ask what another man is 
worth, and they go to the same source, and say he 
is worth ten thousand dollars. Here is one who, 
according to the tax-books, is worth ten thousand 
dollars, and another who is worth three hundred 
thousand dollars; but measured, according to God's 
rule, that man who is worth ten thousand dollars is 
worth a thousand times more to God and humanity 
than the other. After all, it is not how much a 
man is worth, but what sort of a fellow has got it. 
I have found that out. A man who is not relig- 
ious in every thing is not religious in any thing, 
for religion is eternal, uncompromising loyalty to 
God and the right. A man who is religious at all, 
is religious everywhere and in every thing. That 
is it. That old adage — it has grown to be an 
adage — "religion is religion and business is busi- 
ness," enters practically into the life of the Church, 
and culminates in an expression like this : " I do n't 
believe in mixing politics and religion," and it is 
always uttered by the man who has no religion to 
mix with his politics. He who has no religion to 
mix with his politics is a demagogue and a trick- 
ster. I would not mix a drop of politics with my 
religion for all the world, but I want all the relig- 
ion I have to go into my politics. It helps it. 

Cornelius was a thoroughly religious man. There 
11 



122 Seemons axd Sayi^^gs. 

was a moment in his past when the question was 
settled once and forever between his soul and its 
God. ^^ By the grace of God I will be religious/^ 
Until a man reaches this final decision there is 
nothing in all the means of grace that can ever 
make him a religious man. My theology is summed 
up in three lines. God can not arbitrarily make 
a man good, nor can the devil arbitrarily make 
him bad. If you want to be good, God stands 
pledged to help you by all the means of his omnipo- 
tence. If you want to be bad the devil will help 
you. The last remark was unnecessary. There 
are so many living witnesses here to-day who will 
testify to the truth of it. The man who says : " I 
will be religious," wakes up heaven and hell with 
a single utterance, and God will roll an unfinished 
world aside to help such a man. 

Now, brethren, I settled the question once, and 
forever. I will be religious. Then, I want to tell 
you, it is astonishing how the mountains will melt 
down, and the valleys will fill up, and how God 
himself will not only stand at the other end of the 
line, but will walk back down the line and tell me 
to take his arm, and walk and talk with me clear 
home to heaven — an earnest man, a man that means 
business, \yell, now, suppose I decide : "I do n't 
know about this question. If I can be religious, 
and be something else, too, all right ; but I do n't 
like this single-handed business.'' Well, now, I want 
to say this much. You have got to make a choice 
if you are ever religious. 

My wife has given her life to me and to my 



CoENELius, A Devout Man. 123 

children, and I say here to-day, if I could leave my 
precious wife above want I would do it, but I 
would n^t, as a matter of choice, leave a child of 
mine a dollar in the world. You think I don't 
know what I am talking about now. If I were 
going to hunt the worst thing that was ever per- 
petrated, do you know I wouldn't go to hell, and 
I wouldn't go to heaven to hunt it? I would just 
came to this city and get one of your debauched, 
drunken sons-in-law. My Lord! hell itself can't 
beat that. " Some of you know how it is, don't you? 
Is n't it awful ? Your precious Mary married to a 
brutal, drunken husband ! And she lives consciously 
every moment, embraced in the arms of a drunken 
wretch, and every child that God gives her is half- 
drunkard the day it is born. My God! can any 
thing be worse than that? And God Almighty 
says he has got something against your whole com- 
munity when he lets the devil put that sort off on 
you. Did you ever notice that? If a fellow is 
worth about $200,000, it is astonishing how the 
devil can run in drunken sons-in-law on him. You 
had better look out, old fellow. That 's the hand 
of Heaven, and there 's truth in what I am saying. 
No, sir, if success means success in this world and 
success is business, it may mean permanent, eternal 
failure and bankruptcy, for I dare assert it is true 
of many rich men that have sunk down to hell. 
They could not go into joint copartnership in hell 
to-day and buy with all their millions a drop of 
water to cool their parched tongues. And you tell 
me that is success! No, sir, give him success, but 



124 Sermons and Sayings. 

I take religion, and then when the last hour shall 
come, if I die at the rich man^s gate with the dogs 
for my doctors, to lick my sores, I will be lifted out 
of a pauperis body into Abraham^s bosom to live 
forever and ever with God. Let me be a Christian, 
poor or rich, high or low. Let me be loyal to God, 
living right and doing right — " sl devout man," a 
religious man. I like that sort of men. I like a 
man that is religious every time you meet him, and 
religious everywhere he goes, and religious in every 
thing he does. 

I never had much confidence in a man that 
would do things when he goes to New York that 
he would n^t do here at home. You have some of 
that sort here. A fellow that's sober as a judge at 
home, when he goes on a fishing tour can not get 
along without a keg of whisky ; and he drinks it 
all the way along, and claims to be pious. And that 
is n't all. You not only take it along, and that's 
wrong in itself, but there are not half of you that 
take it who do not lie about it afterwards. That 's 
one thing about sin. It not only makes a fool out of 
you, but makes a rascal out of you at every crack. 
That 's as true as that the sun shines. I never have 
seen but one man in America that would stand up 
and say he drank whisky and never told his wife a 
lie about it. Have you got one here to-day? Is 
there a man here who drinks whisky who never 
told his wife a lie about it? If there is, stand up 
here, I want to see you. I expect some of you 
would have stood up but your wives are with you 
and you do n't want to be caught in a lie. 



CoENELius, A Devout Man. 125 

" A devout man.'^ That means a religious man ; 
religious everywhere under all circumstances. That 's 
the sense of this text ; " Cornelius, a devout man." 
Thoroughly religious. When a pastor has that 
class of members in his Church he can bank on them, 
and everywhere. He knows just as well where to 
go and what to ask for as he knows his name. 
Good Lord, fill every Church in this city with 
thoroughly religious people, and then v/e will take 
this country for God. ^^ Cornelius, a devout man." 
Now listen: "And" — you notice that copulative 
conjunction in there — " and feared God, with all 
his house." Do you notice that when we talk about 
people we never use the copulative conjunction ? 
We use the disjunctive " but." Did you ever notice 
that ? You ask about Brother A, and the answer is, 
"Well, he's good, but he do isn't pray in his 
family." " Well," you say, " how about Brother 
]g 9 ^> a ^ell, he 's a good man, a very good man, 
but he seems to like his dram." You ask, " How 
about Brother C?" "Well, he's a mighty nice, 
good man, but he does n't pray in his family and 
does n't always come to Church." Well, you ask 
again about So-and-so, and you are told, "he's a 
mighty good man, but he '11 just knock you down 
in a minute if you bother him." 

When you have gone all round, whenever you 
have asked about any body, they do n't talk more 
than two minutes before they begin to use this con- 
junctive. They say, " He 's so and so, but he 's 
also so and so." You can take this disjunctive con- 
junction "but" and chip character all to pieces 



126 Seemons and Sayings. 

with it in a minute. Now, God tells us Cornelius 
was a devout man, and — do n't you see? — ^^and.'^ 
I like that "and/' You can just take any fellow 
in this town and say all about him. " He 's good 
and kind." Then you commence to "but'' him, 
and the first thing you know you butt him off the 
bridge, and that's the last of him. Lord have 
mercy upon us. Is the world a multitude of gossipers 
and slanderers, or is it a fact that nobody can say three 
good words about us without telling something 
mean about us? Is that so ? People say, " She 's 
a pretty good woman, but if she gets mad with you 
she will never make it up ; " or, they say, " She 's 
a right good neighbor, but she wants you to pay 
back every thing you borrow ;" or, " She 's a mighty 
good wife, but I tell you if her husband does n't 
do to suit her she will give him brimstone." I 
mean those Georgia women, of course. That kind 
of thing has never occurred here in this city. I 
know you women just show in your faces that you 
are like angels. You look as if all you needed was a 
pair of wings, and you would go to glory without 
any further ceremony. It does tickle me just to 
see you women put on an air of injured innocence. 
" You know I 'm just as innocent as can be. I 
never quarreled with my husband in my life, and 
I never said a cross word to one of my children." 
Sister, if you have n't done this, I will get you a 
pair of wings before night and start you on to glory. 
" A devout man, and one that feared God with all 
his house." Now, listen. When Cornelius got relig- 
ion, he got it all over • or, if you like the expression 



Cornelius, a Devout Man. 127 

better, it got him all over from head to foot. That 
is the first thing that happened to him, and he 
then feared God with all his house. Then the wife 
was religious and all the household were religious. 
And, I tell you the grandest sight angels ever look 
on in this world, is a father who takes the wife by 
the hand, and the wife leads the eldest child by 
the hand, and the eldest child the next, and so on, 
and to see that father and mother just leading 
their children right into the pearly gates for ever 
and ever — the whole family housed in heaven — 
that is a grand sight on earth and it is a grander 
sight in heaven. 

But I tell you the saddest sight that God^s eyes 
ever looked on — and he has seen the whole Missis- 
sippi Valley blighted with death and yellow fever; 
he has seen whole provinces of China starved to 
death ; he has seen the flood of war covering almost 
half of the world — the saddest sights God's eyes ever 
looked on, is a father who takes the wife by the 
hand, and the wife who takes the eldest child by 
the hand, and both leading them to the brink of 
the river of death, until at last father, mother, and 
children all leap into the river that is lined from 
source to mouth with human wretches floating on 
to death and hell. There are hundreds of such 
families in this city going to hell — father, mother, 
and children, the whole group, hand in hand, and 
arm in arm. Is it yours? Is it yours? Is it 
yours, sir ? If there is a deeper, darker place in 
perdition than all others, it seems to be for the hus- 
band and father, who willingly and deliberately 



128 Sermons axd Sayings. 

turns his back on God^ and grasping his family, 
leads them down to hell. And I want to tell 
you men in this town, if there is a man w^ho 
has a good Christian wife, a praying, earnest 
Christian woman, and that mother is doing all she 
can to save her children, and the father is doing all 
he can to undo the mother's work and prayers ; 
who, w^hen his wife prays, sneers, and when the 
wife strives to lead the children to God strives to 
lead them away by his example ; that if there is a 
more intolerable hell for any one, it is for that man 
who tries to undo the work of a Christian wife, and 
in spite of her prayers and tears, drags her children 
down to hell. And that 's you, sir ; and that 's 
you, sir ; and that 's you, sir. O it were better for you 
that you never had been born, than to curse the 
life of a good wife, and damn the children of a good 
mother. If I have any thing special in reference 
to my wife and children to be grateful for, it is 
this: I have no living child that ever looked 
into my face when I was not a consecrated Chris- 
tian man. God gave us one when I was wrecked 
and wayward and godless. That little child lived 
and looked in my face when I was godless and 
profane and wretched, and God took her to heaven ; 
and I have often wished that Bickersteth had told 
the truth w^hen he said — and if it be true it is the 
sweetest thing poet ever said — "A babe in heaven 
is a babe forever.'^ And I have thoug^ht of that 
lovely one there, with my mind made up, I shall 
live a Christian as long as God gives me a child to 
look in my face, and when I get to heaven I will 



Cornelius, a Devout Man. 129 

fall down and beg pardon of that sweet little angel 
that she ever saw me when I was n't a Christian. 

Now this riffraff, these low-down scoundrels 
round this town that have no wife or children, they 
may, in a sense, afford to swear, and drink, and sin ; 
but when a father sins he sins with a vengeance, be- 
cause every wicked act of his life is an impediment 
in the way of his children, that God himself must 
pull them over before they can ever get to God and 
glory. 

"A devout man, and one that feared God with 
all his house.'^ No, sir ; if you ask me which I would 
rather see, all my family religious, or enjoy the in- 
heritance of a Vanderbilt, I will say I had rather 
see one of my sweet children converted to God than 
to be presented with a hundred million dollars. 
The Atlanta Constitution, the other day, had a notice 
of a note to the editor of the Asheville (North Car- 
olina) Times, in which a man wanted to get the ad- 
dress of Sam Jones, with an intimation that some 
man out there had died and left him a large legacy. 
Well, that item went the rounds and this person saw 
it and the people got excited about it, and came to 
me and asked if I had seen it. I told them, yes, I 
saw it; and they said, "Are you going to send on 
your papers and your proofs?'' Said I, '^No.'^ 
'^Why?" was asked. "Well, in the first place, I 
don't know but what it is some trap; and in the 
second place, I am getting along so well without a 
legacy that I think I will just keep on this w^ay. 
I am doing swimmingly without one, and God only 
knows what would happen to me if I had one. So 



130 Seemons and Sayings. 

I 've gotten along first-rate^ do n't you see V^ Ninety- 
nine, I had like to have said — and I think it is 
true — ninety-nine cases in a hundred, where you 
leave your children §20,000 apiece, without the 
heritage of a good name or a Christian character to 
go with it, you are leaving them enough to buy a 
through ticket to hell; and they will invest in it, 
and check their baggage through, and never stop 
until into hell they go. That 's the truth. 

'^ Yes,'' you say, " Jones is preaching commun- 
ism." I am not. I tell you to-day, there isn't a 
man in this country that fights communism stronger 
than I do. I have no sympathy with this low- 
down rack of God's creation going round doing 
nothing and wanting every thing that every body 
else has; and I have no sympathy with the fellow 
that has got a big pile of it and won't give any 
away. That's the way I feel about it. I have 
found out that money is like a walking-stick. One 
will help you along if you are lame, but fifty loaded 
on your back will break you down. That 's so, and 
the matter with some of you people is that you are 
loaded down with money. Money is like guano; 
if you put it on too thick it will burn up every 
thing. And so money, if you load on too heavily, 
will spoil a man. The richest man the world ever 
saw was also one of the best. Abraham could have 
bought out Vanderbilt and scarcely have missed 
the money he checked out of the bank to pay for 
Vanderbilt's estate, and yet he was one of the best 
men on earth. It is not so much the money as the 
sort of fellow that has it. That 's it. 



CoENELius, A Devout Man. 131 

" Feared God with all his house/^ Now, brother, 
if there is a sight that charms my soul it is a family 
devoted to God — father, mother, aud children, all 
in love and harmony with God. What a grand 
sight that is ! I have been trying to finish a little 
cottage home at my house for several weeks, for my 
wife and children, and I told my wife the other 
day : " When the last nail is driven and the work 
is complete, we will get our friends together, and 
we will dedicate this house to God." Said I : 
" Wife, it will do our children good to know that 
they sleep in God^s house ; that they eat in God's 
house ; and that every thing they do here is in God's 
house. Let us tell them : ^ Children, your mother 
and father have given this house to God ; we are 
God's children ; we are your elder brothers and 
sisters. We are all children of God. Let us help 
each other to be good and to do right.' Then I 
said : " Wife, nobody will ever ask us to play cards 
here. They would no more play cards in this house 
than if it were a church. And nobody will ask us 
to let them dance balls here ; nobody will want to 
dance in God's house. And nobody will ask us to 
give wine suppers here. This is God's house. Let 
us protect our home and protect our children by 
giving our house to God." She said : " It 's a 
bargain." And so I have a house for my children 
that is God's house, in which to raise them, as if 
they were my little brothers and ^ters and children 
of God. 

Let me tell you, if every house in this city were 
dedicated to God this afternoon, at three o'clock. 



132 Seemons and Sayings. 

there would be some moving out, wouldn't there? 
My ! my ! Old Brother and Sister Euchre, old 
Brother and Sister Progressive Euchre would have 
to rack out, would n't they ? And I reckon when 
you get backed up into heaven, for you never will 
get there unless God backs you there, as you are 
headed from it now — and God will have to turn 
you round or back you into glory, one or the 
other — I reckon if one of your sort were to get in 
there at last, to your astonishment, you would hear 
it said, "There come old Brother and Sister Euchre. 
Here they are V^ And it would be the biggest 
wonder in heaven when the angels of God see old 
Brother and Sister Euchre dropping in. And then 
there's old Sister and Brother Demijohn, and old 
Brother Ballroom and Sister Ballroom. Whenever 
you dedicate your house to God the first thing you 
will have to do is to wash the deviPs fleas off you. 
You can get the fleas of the flesh off with es- 
sence of peppermint, but it takes essence of damna- 
tion to do any thing with these moral fleas. 

O for a house dedicated to God, a home dedi- 
cated to God, where the mother lives in the atmos- 
phere of prayer, where the children are brought up 
under the most sacred influences that either heaven 
or earth know any thing of I tell you, brethren, 
if there is a spot on earth of which it can be said 
truthfully, that, angels encamp round about it, it 
must be the home that is devoutly consecrated to 
God, with a good father and good mother and 
all the children consecrated to God. Don't you 
like that ? 



CoKNELius, A Devout Man. 133 

" Feared God, with all his house. ^^ Now, you 
see, Cornelius got religion himself, and the first thing 
you know it broke out all over his family; and now 
I tell you that there 's a varioloid type of it that 
is n't catching. You know that, for there is n't one 
of your children that caught it, sister. The vario- 
loid type — nobody knows you had it. They just 
put you in bed a day or two and you were out be- 
fore any body found out you were sick. The vario- 
loid type of piety has taken possession of this coun- 
try, but it is n't catching. But you get one of the 
old-fashioned, confluent cases of small-pox, and every 
body will catch it that goes into the room. This 
varioloid type of religion that you see nowadays 
isn't catching, but you take an old-fashioned case, 
and when a man has got it, the first thing you know 
his wife will get it, and it will break out over the 
family, and the whole family will be consecrated to 
God. 

You hear people say that minister's children are 
worse than any body else's children. I say that's a 
great big lie. There is n't a word of truth in it. I 
want to tell you what my observation teaches me, 
that the minister's children are better than any body 
else's children. I know men in Georgia to-day, 
raised by Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and 
Christian ministers that any man in this city would 
be glad to call father. I do n't go much on the 
preacher who hasn't got a religious family, though 
there are circumstances that we ought to weigh 
mighty closely. I am afraid he has n't got religion 
himself unless it has taken possession of his 



134 Sermons a:nd Sayings. 

household. I know one thing, one of the best 
preachers in our State has the worst children, but 
that is because the combined influences of city life 
and the evils which are centered there have tempted 
and carried off his boys. And I know another 
thing; if I turn loose a godless child into this 
world, when I come to die you can go to my tomb- 
stone and chip in large letters: ^^Here lies the 
most arrant hypocrite this world ever saw.'^ If you 
have got religion right, the first thing you know 
your whole crowd will get it. That is my doc- 
trine. 

^^ Feared God, with all his house.'' Brother, the 
darkest, gloomiest spot on earth is the home where 
there is no Christ and no piety and no prayer. A 
prayerless house is the home of the devil, and his 
children live there. Ti^ell, now, what else? First, 
he got it himself; and, secondly, it took all over his 
household, until wife and children and servants, all 
were religious. Then what came? ^^ He gave much 
alms to the poor.'' See how the thing spreads — how 
it grows out and develops, and takes hold of all the 
land. I like a liberal fellow. I will tell you this: 
What a man gives is a test of what a man is. You 
take a man in the Church that is stingy; there isn't 
a preacher in this crowd that has any hope at all for 
him, or any patience with him. If I had charge of 
some Churches in this world, filled up with low- 
flung, stingy members, that were as stingy as some 
of them are, I would have no faith at all that I 
could accomplish any thing, and I would be afraid 
the devil would get the last one of them, and I 



CoKNELius, A Devout Man. 135 

would have to pray mightily to keep from being glad 
that he did. You know a man is in a pretty close 
place when he has to pray that way. Have you 
ever been that way, brother? If you haven't, then 
you do n't know some of the close places I have 
been in. I had one of that sort of members once 
send his wife for me when he was sick. He wanted 
to see me, as he was about to die. I went there, 
and he wanted me to pray for him. I said : " Pray 
for your ^^ Yes,'' he said. I said, ^^What for?" 
He said he wished me to pray that he might get 
well again. Said I : " I can 't do that, brother.'^ 
He asked why. I told him : ^^ I try to be honest 
w^hen on my knees, and if I were to get on my knees 
and pray God to let you live, and he were to ask 
me what I wanted you to live for, I could n't tell 
to save my life. I do n't know what I want you to 
live for. You won't pray, and you won't do any 
thing else. What would I tell God I wanted you 
to live for ?" I staid there a few minutes, and when 
I got up to leave he said : " Do you need any corn ?'' 
I told him I needed a load or so, or could use it, 
and said he : "I '11 send you a load down." And 
he did, and I do n't know whether any body else 
made any thing or not, but I got a big load of corn 
out of that man. Brethren, there 's many a man in 
this city that, if an honest preacher were to be asked 
to sit down and pray for God to let him live, the 
preacher couldn't honestly do it. What do you 
want him to live for? He does no good in the 
Church ; he won't pay, he won't pray, he won't do 
any thing. 



136 Sermons and Sayings. 

The other day I picked up the Atlanta Consti- 
tution, and I saw an item concerning a Georgia man 
who was dangerously ill in New York. My heart 
leaped up as I saw it, and I said : ^^ Lord God, 

do n't let die. We can 't get along without 

him in Georgia. There is no good work going on 
that he is not up to his elbows in it. Lord, do n't 
let him die.'' The next telegram I read he was 
getting better, and he got well and is now back in 
Atlanta. 

I would n't pray for that first fellow, I could n't; 

but just as soon as I saw that was ill I was 

praying for him. He is only twenty-eight or thirty 
years old, a merchant in Atlanta, a first-class fellow. 
There is but one trouble with him, and that is his 
stinginess. Why, sir, he is worth 1 20,000 and only 
gives $1,500 a year out of it for God and religion! 
I mean he is worth $20,000, and we can 't get more 
than $1,500 a year out of him. One of your 'pos- 
sum-eared fellows, is n't he ? If I were to bring 
him up here and set him down beside you fellows 
he would scare you to death. Why, we were tak- 
ing up a foreign missionary collection and this man 
stood up and said to the pastor : ^^ I gave last year 
the best sister boy ever had to the foreign mission- 
ary field. This year I '11 give you $500 for foreign 
missions." O, my good Lord, give us some of that 
sort here. Give us one of that sort, to wake up the 
old fogies ; just to show them what a fellow can be, 
you know. 

Good Lord, help us to see that heaven is all 
around us here. I can stand right where I am 



CoKNELius, A Devout Man. 137 



and throw a rock into the middle of heaven. It is 
all about us. You say you will go to heaven when 
you die. Lord bless you, if you do n^t get to 
heaven a few times before you die, you will never 
get there after you die. There are some preachers 
in this country who spend about one-third of their 
life on heavenly recognition — preaching heavenly 
recognition. Well, you will never catch me on 
that lay — heavenly recognition. I am like that old 
preacher in our State who said he did n't study 
about heavenly recognition. He said: "What I 
want is earthly recognition. Brothers, please rec- 
ognize me down here; help me along down here. 
I am in a heap of trouble, and what I need is 
earthly recognition. When I get to heaven, and 
get a crown upon my head, and a harp in my hand, 
and sit down under the shade of the tree of life, I 
won't want recognition then, because I will be 
already elected for all time to come.'' I like that, 
and I like a generous man — a man that never has 
a dollar that is too good for God and the right. 
You have some generous people here. Thank God 
for every one you have got. 
12 



SBRMON VII. 

AI>I> THINQS Vv^ORK TOGKXHKK. KOR GOOD. 

"And we know that all things work together for good to 
them that love God, to them who are the called according to 
his purpose. — Rom. viii, 28. 

WE can say there is but one single exception in 
all the universe to the truth of this utter- 
ance, and God makes that exception all through his 
book. Every thing in this universe, except sin, 
works for the good of those that love God. There 
is nothing in sin, or of sin, or about sin, or around sin, 
or above it, or beneath it, or connected with it in any 
way, that can ever work for any body's good. What 
you have done that is wrong, what you ought to 
have done that you did not do, God can never make 
work for your good. If you have staid away 
from a prayer-meeting, God can never make that 
work for your good. If you have neglected your 
duty, God can never make that neglect work for 
your good. There is no provision of grace to make 
up for any body what he has lost from the neglect 
of duty. 

Now recollect, if you are a Christian and love 
God, every thing you can not help, every thing you 
would have warded off if you could, every thing you 
would have conquered if you could, every thing in 
this life, except sin, works for good; and God him- 
self can not make sin work for any body's good, be- 
138 



WOEKING FOR GoOD. 139 

cause sin is the reversal, the throwing out of gear 
the machinery of our nature. When we begin to 
go wrong we reverse the machinery of our nature 
and run it backwards. You can no more work for 
God when you reverse the machinery of your nature 
than you can make your sewing-machine sew when 
you run it backwards. One is as impossible as the 
other. All things work for good when you are run- 
ning in harmony with God and in a line with God; 
for, after all, religion is nothing more than harmony 
with God. When you walk up to your piano, and 
touch a key in that elegant instrument, and that key 
is out of tune, and out of harmony, it is out of har- 
mony, not only with the rest of the keys of the 
piano, but it is out of harmony with every thing 
in the universe that is in harmony. But when the 
piano-tuner walks up to that piano and opens it, 
and takes out his instruments and works away at 
that particular string until he gets it in harmony, 
then that key is in harmony wdth every thing in the 
universe. And religion is getting in harmony with 
God. Then every thing moves along harmon- 
iously, adjusting and setting the Ten Command- 
ments to music. Is it not so ? When God bids 
me do this or that he touches a chord in my na- 
ture in sympathy with his own divine heart, and 
then we are in harmony with all. God wills and 
wishes it, and he will make every thing in this 
universe conduce to our present and eternal happi- 
ness. 

" And we know that all things work together 
for good to them that love God.'' There is the text. 



140 Seemons and Sayings. 

There are three classes of people here this afternoon, 
and these three classes represent the whole world. 
The first class we mention are those that know they 
love God. Thank God, there are such persons on 
the face of the earth, persons who know they do 
love God. There is another class here, and those 
in that class do not love God ; and about nine-tenths 
of us make up the third class, persons who do not 
know whether they love God or not. Sometimes 
they think they love him. Sometimes they think 
they do not. Nine-tenths of the world are made 
up of do n't-know-what-to-thinks. O, how numerous 
they are ! But what is the use of going on in that 
way ? If I were a ten-year-old boy and you asked 
me, " Do you love your mother ?'^ I should reply : 
"Yes, sir, I do.'' "How do you know?'' "Be- 
cause when I do what mother says for me to do I 
feel good about it, and when I do something mother 
told me not to do, I feel bad about it." " Well, 
what other reason ?" " I love her, and I love to hear 
her name reverently and kindly used." "Well, 
what other reason ?" " It makes me feel bad for 
any one to speak unkindly and irreverently of my 
mother." Now you ask me, " Are you a Christian?" 
"Yes." "Do you love God?" "Yes." "How 
do you know you do ?" " Because when I do what 
God tells me I feel good about it." " How else do 
you know it ?" " Because when I do something he 
told me not to do, I feel as bad about it as I can." 
"How else do you know it?" "It does me good 
to hear people praise God and speak reverently of 
him, and it gives me a horror to hear any one bias- 



Working for Good. 141 

pheme him.'^ I have as many reasons why I love 
God as I had why I loved my mother. 

The love of God is not necessarily an emotional 
feeling. I hear people talk a heap about feeling 
that they love God. I never stop to see whether I 
have feelings or not. I never inquire about that. 
Some people say they never want to do any thing 
unless they feel like it. I have seen preachers that 
are always gadding about, and are extremely anx- 
ious that all the members of their congregation shall 
be visited. Then there are preachers whose minds 
and hearts are in their Church, and they would 
rather be whipped than go and see any body. This 
brother deserves a thousand times more credit than 
Brother Gadabout. If pastoral visiting would have 
saved this town, it would have been saved long ago. 
God never said that people should be saved by pas- 
toral visiting. He said that the Gospel is the power 
of God unto salvation. And I have a great deal 
more respect for the brother who would rather talk 
and preach the Gospel than go and see any body 
than I have for the brother who would rather be 
running around all the time. I tell you how I feel 
about it. I do not care Avhether a minister ever 
puts a foot in my house all the year round or not ; 
but I will say one thing : When my wife and chil- 
dren visit my pastor I want him to preach enough 
solid truth to keep them going the whole week, 
instead of running and gadding about, and getting 
in my wife's way, and keeping things disarranged 
all the week while she is looking for the preacher. 

I want my preacher to let my family visit him 



142 Sermons and Sayings. 

at the house of God. I never saw people that 
quarreled about the pastor not visiting them that 
amounted to much, anyhow. If you treat a preacher 
right, and give him a good, square meal every time 
he calls, he hasn't any more sense than to come 
back again. If a preacher does n't come to see you 
it is your fault. Isn't that so, brother? Christ 
told his disciples when they went to a place, to go 
to one house and put up there, and not to be run- 
ning about all over creation. He knew what he 
was talking about. But if I could not preach much 
I would make it up in visiting. What I lost in 
dancing I would make up in turning round. You 
quit bothering your preacher about coming to see 
you and help him in his work! If he has one 
thousand members in his Church you make your- 
self useful and help him to look after the other nine 
hundred and ninety-nine. I used to have some 
members of my Church everlastingly at me to visit 
them. One family bothered me more than any of 
the others, and when I did make a call I made it 
a jumping, bouncing class-meeting, and they never 
bothered me any more. If some of you pastors 
would do the same you would not be bothered as 
much as you are. 

Now I branched ofF from the subject I was dis- 
cussing. I say whether we feel like it or not, let 
us say : " I am going to do what I consider is right." 
I am not inquiring this afternoon whether there is 
an emotional feeling toward God in my heart. 
What has Jesus Christ said? "Hereby ye know 
that ye love me because ye feel that ye do so?" 



WOEKING FOR GoOD. 143 

No, he never said that; he said: ^^ Hereby ye may 
know that ye love me because ye keep my com- 
mandments/^ God, love, and loyalty are synony- 
mous in this sense. Loyalty to the right — absolute 
eschewing of the wrong — is proof to them that love 
God that they do love him. 

Our text might read this way: "All things 
work together for good to them that keep the com- 
mandments of God." That is about the practical 
meaning of it. Well, now, if I am loyal to God 
straight out through and through, then the promise 
is : '^All things shall work together for good." 
Well, I might stop here, but I wonder what that 
word "good" means. Suppose we give it this 
interpretation : "All things shall work together for 
the riches of God's people." Temporal riches — 
temporal prosperity ? Why, if it had read that way 
there w^ould not have been a word of truth in it, be- 
cause, generally speaking, God's people are poor 
people. 

Most people can not stand prosperity. Now, if 
you are going to be rich and religious both at the 
same time and place, all right, and if ever you get 
to heaven you will wear a bright crown there ; no 
doubt about that. But I will say one thing to you, 
you had better look out along that line. Some folks 
think I have some spite against rich folks, like all 
poor white trash, but I have no spite against any 
body. If there is any body good to me it is the 
rich. If there is any body kind to me it is the 
rich. I think so much of the rich people of this 
country that I shall not let the devil get them if I 



144 Seemoxs axd SAYI^'GS. 

can liel}) it, and I am going to talk to them when I 
feel like it. How many genuinely Scriptural pious 
rich women do you know in town ? I do not 
mean, how many belong to the Church? I know 
the Church will get them in, and it^s glad to get 
them, religion or no religion. I ain't talking about 
that. How many genuinely Scriptural, devoted, 
pious rich women have you got in your city ? How 
many pure, noble, consecrated, self-sacrificing, pious 
men who are millionaires have you got in your 
city ? Xow, I never said there were not any. I 
never said how many. I ask you, how many? 

Prosperity ! God never said : "All things 
shall work together for the prosperity of God's 
people." They could not stand it. Some folks 
could not go to heaven out of a three-story house. 
That's a fact. I do not say I am one of those who 
could. I never tried it and never will, I reckon. 
Prosperity — I do not want any thing to come be- 
tween me and my loyalty to God. I like Agur's 
prayer : " Give me neither poverty nor riches ; feed 
me with food convenient for me ; lest I be full and 
deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be 
poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in 
vain." The medium is best. Let me have "suffi- 
cient unto the day," with the blessed assurance that 
I shall dwell in the land and shall be fed. 

God never said: "All things shall work 
together for the health of God's people. " I 
think some of the most afflicted people I ever 
met in this life have been the best, and I think 
sometimes most of us would get along better if we 



Working for Good. 145 

were sick more. Take an ordinary Methodist, now 
a backslider, and strike him down with a six weeks' 
spell of typhoid fever, and you can do more to get 
him better spiritually than by preaching 500,000 
sermons. Shake a sinner over a coffin and turn 
him loose, and he will hit the ground running every 
time. David said, ''It was good for me that I was 
afflicted. '^ It is a mighty hard matter to keep a 
big, fat, sleek Church member straight ; but get him 
down for a day to where he is pretty near to death 
and eternity and it has a good effect. It is whole- 
some. 

It is said of Jenny Lind that when Goldsmith 
first heard her sing, as he walked out of the opera 
house, somebody said, '' Goldsmith, how did you 
like her singing ?'' He said, " Well, there was a 
harshness about her voice that needs toning down. 
If I could marry that woman, break her heart and 
crush her feelings, then she could sing.'' And it is 
said that afterwards when he did marry her and 
broke her heart and crushed her feelings, Jenny 
Lind sang with the sweetest voice ever listened to ; 
so sweet that the angels of God would almost rush to 
the parapets of heaven to catch the strains. Some- 
times violets send forth their sweetest odors when 
crushed beneath the foot. Some of the most religious 
people have been the most deeply afflicted ; and 
if there is one prayer I have prayed from the depths 
of my heart it is, '' Lord, if I am to save my soul 
at any cost; if I am to lie on a bed of pain for 
thirty years, if that is necessary, let me begin now, 

and suffer till I draw my last breathy rather than 

13 



146 Seemons and Sayings. 

to be joyous and healthy in this life and then 
enter into the other world and into a life of inter- 
minable suffering. Lord, whatever is necessary to 
save my soul let it come on me. Save my soul, 
good Lord, at any cost to me.^' That is the way 
we ought to pray. I used to think when I first 
became religious that if I got sick or my wife got 
sick, ^' That 's a sign God does n't love me.'' But 
now I know that God loves me with all his great 
heart. 

Then he did not say : ^' All things shall work 
together for the honor of God's people, for the 
popularity of God's people." I tell you, sometimes 
if you do your whole duty you Avill be very unpop- 
ular. Did you ever notice that if you want to 
be popular in society you must not be much of a 
Christian ? You must, of course, belong to the 
Church, and you must agree with every body. 
Do n't disagree with any thing. If you visit the 
house of. a friend, and they have cards, do n't say a 
word against them, but say : " Some people object 
to them, but I don't see any harm in them." O 
how much of that sort of nonsense there is in the 
Church! And if they have dancing, tell them, 
^' Our preachers do n't like it ; but to save my soul 
I have never seen any harm in it." And if they 
want to go to the theater, tell them, ^' Yes, I was a 
young girl once myself, and I used to go to the 
theater." When the apostles preached the truth, it 
is said but one of them died a natural death. 
Those that loved to preach the truth languished to 
death in dungeons, or were burned at the stake, or 



WOEKING FOR GoOD. 147 

stoned. It is not a very popular thing to be an 
earnest, zealous Christian. It is not. God never 
said : " All things are working together for the 
popularity of God's people. '^ 

You take a popular preacher, a preacher whom 
every body likes, whom the gamblers like, the liars 
like, the drunkards like, and there is something 
wrong. Whenever liars and gamblers and hypo- 
crites and backslidden members like me, I'll tell 
the Lord : " I am wrong, I know I am. There 
is something wrong about this thing.'' 

I have noticed another thing. You recollect 
the Pharisees and Sadducees had no use for one 
another. They hated each other, but when Christ 
came along they clubbed together and let in on him. 
Here is a backsliding Baptist sister, and there is a 
backsliding Methodist sister. They have no use 
for each other under ordinary circumstances, but 
when a preacher comes along and knocks the bark off 
of them they join against him, and it is astonishing 
how intimate they get. They meet at the theater 
or at the card table, and there are a great many 
points on which they agree, and when they meet they 
join in the fight against this one or that one. 

Now I believe in voting. This country is run- 
ning a good deal on voting, and so on, and I want 
every lady in this house that enjoys religion, and 
has cares at home, who goes to the theater, who 
shines at social parties and dances, just square 
dances — she has not cut the corners off the thing 
yet — I want every lady here that really enjoys re- 
ligion, and goes to these places and plays cards and 



148 Seemons and Sayings. 

dances, to stand up. I want to see you. Stand 
up, every one of you ! If I were one I would 
stand up and be laughed at and say : ^^ Here is 
one/^ What! none? But I will tell you what 
such persons will say now. They will say : " I 
do n^t enjoy religion. I will admit that. I have 
got religion, but I do n^t enjoy it.^' Now listen to 
me : There is but one reason why you do n't en- 
joy religion, and that is because you have n't got 
any to enjoy. It is the most enjoyable thing a 
fellow ever struck, and the question would be with 
me. How can I keep from enjoying it? Got re- 
ligion, but do n't enjoy it ! 

God never said that "all things shall work to- 
gether for the worldly honors of God's people." 
He never said that, I am glad the Lord's people 
do n't take many honors in this world the way it 
goes now. I am glad they don't take any good 
Christian and run him for President the way they 
run them now. I am glad of that. I tell you if 
a man were all right and they were to run him for 
President, would n't they smirch him ? Take 
Blaine and Cleveland. Ten years of close appli- 
cation of warm water and soft soap would not 
wash off the smirching and vituperation that was 
thrown on those two men in their last race. If 
what was said against those two men were true, 
they ought both to be in the chain gang. I am 
glad the Lord's people do not have things in that 
way. I do n't want to be President if they put 
more mud on me before I get there than I can 
wash off while I am there, 



Working for Good. 149 

Worldly honors ! They are not for God's peo- 
ple. What does this mean? '^ All things work for 
good." What is this " goodf ' It is n't health. It 
is n't happiness. It is n't prosperity. It is n't 
worldly honors. What is it the Lord means here? 
Now, let us come to the true text for a moment : 
" All things work together for the salvation of them 
that love God.'' Salvation is the greatest good this 
earth ever heard of or can experience. Now, I can 
see into the text, and see into a thousand things. 
"All things work together for the salvation," for 
the present, and eternal salvation of them that love 
God. A heap of strange things happen in this 
world, sister. You say; "Well, I can not see, to 
save my life, how the loss of my husband could 
work for my good. I can not see how the loss of 
my sweet child can work for my good. I can not 
see how the loss of every dollar of our property can 
work for my good." O how strange things have 
happened! Well, now, you see that clock on the 
mantel at home. You walk up and look at that 
clock. You take it down and look at the dial, and 
look at the works, which must be put together by 
a clockmaker. I took my clock to pieces once, 
and after I had put it together again I had sufficient 
wheels left to make another clock. I could not get 
it right. It had been made by a clockmaker, 
and only a clockmaker could put the wheels in 
their proper places again. When you look at the 
works of a clock you say: "Well, well, all those 
wheels can not be necessary. There is one big 
wheel turning slowly and another one fast. There 



150 Seemons and Sayings. 

is a great big one turning backward and a little 
one forward/^ You say a clock like that can not 
keep time. You put the dial back and the clock 
ticks on and strikes the hours, and you say: ^^ It 
does keep time. I do not care how it looks.^^ '^ow, 
God sets up in heaven the largest clock of all, and 
we can not see the machinery. Here is health and 
peace in your family. Well, that is a little wheel 
moving forward. The last dollar of your property 
is swept away. Well, that is a big wheel turning 
backward; but all things work for you, and work 
harmoniously in one direction for your present good 
and eternal salvation. 

When I was at Columbus, Ga., I walked through 
an immense cotton factory. I was shown all the 
machinery, that which cut the hoops around the 
raw cotton, that which picked the cotton, and I 
followed one machine after another, from one floor 
to another. I watched some machinery carding 
cotton, others pulling it on to reels. At times I 
would say : " Look here, surely this is not the way to 
make cloth. If I did not want to make cloth, I 
would do just as you are doing.'' But when we got 
to the last machine, on the fourth floor, there was 
a pile of cotton cloth bundled up ready for the 
market. I looked dow^n the line of machines and 
said, every machine in this factory works together 
for cloth ; and, sister, by and by, when you step 
into the heavenly gates, you will look back and say : 
^^ Every thing in my life worked for good.'' O, 
how true these things are ! 

My father used to say : " My son, if you do that 



WOEKING FOR GoOD. 151 

I will correct you/^ When I got off by myself I 
said : " Papa is so cruel to me. Sometimes he 
whips me for doing some things^ and if ever I get 
grown up I am going to ask papa what made him 
do that/' But I was not eighteen when I found 
that my father had corrected me for things that 
would have ruined me if I had been left alone. 
When you get to heaven you will say : " God 
brought me to salvation the only vvay he could 
have brought me safely thus far.'' 

"All things work together for good." A man 
once gave me this illustration of the text. He said 
he was sitting out under a tree in a garden eating 
a biscuit when he saw a little ant climbing upon 
the plank. He watched it, and said : " I reckon 
this little ant is in search of food." He had 
dropped a crumb, but the little ant was going in 
the opposite direction to it. He put his finger in 
the way of the ant to direct it to the crumb, and 
the little thing seemed to lose patience and want to 
quarrel with him, and it seemed to say : " Why do 
you stop me? I am hunting food for my young." 
The ant started off in another direction, and he 
dropped his finger again in front of the little ant, 
which seemed to be madder than before, and it 
seemed to say : " O, you great intelligent creature, 
why do you stop me? I am hunting food for my 
young." He dropped his finger in front of the ant 
again and again, and each time it seemed to say : 
" Why do you stop me ? I am in earnest search of 
food for my young." He said he dropped his finger 
in front of the ant until he directed it to the crumb, 



152 Sermons and Sayings. 

and when it picked the crumb up it seemed to say : 
^^ I am so glad you put me in the way of finding this. 
Here is more food than I could have found in a 
month if you had left me alone.'' In this world 
when we are moving in the wrong direction, down 
comes the providential finger of God, and you say : 
"I know I have the worst luck of any body.'' 
And we stand and quarrel with God and ourselves. 
We start out in another direction, and just about 
the time we think we are about to succeed, down 
comes God's providential finger, and we say ; " Just 
look at that !" In this way God drives us right to 
the gate of heaven, and when we walk in there we 
say : " Glory be to God. If we had been left alone 
we would have gone to perdition, but he has driven 
me right to the joys of everlasting life." 

Providence means going before. I believe in 
Providence as strongly as I believe in any thing. 
Here is a wagon train moving westward. A horseman 
lopes ahead, picks out the camping-place, buys the 
provender for the stock, and arranges every thing. 
That man was the providence of the wagon train. 
Providence goes on ahead to arrange and plan 
every thing. Now let us in God's providence from 
this time say : " I will go along, and trust in God 
that every thing will work together for good. 
Though he fall he shall not be utterly cast down, 
for the Lord upholdeth his hand." 

I hold a baby's hand as it walks. Its foot 
strikes something, and it falls with a force that 
would crush its face. But I hold up the baby by 
the hand, and I say, " Baby, I am so glad you had 



WoEKiNG FOR Good. 153 

my hand. If you had not held it you would have 
ruined your little face on the rocks. I have some- 
times gone along and fallen, and I have thought I 
was gone forever, but the Lord had my hand and 
held me up, and I say, " Bless the Lord ! If he had 
not held my hand I should have fallen down into 
eternal despair." 

One day my two little boys ran ahead of me on 
the sidewalk. Directly I noticed they were back 
again holding by my fingers. Well, I thought, 
^^ What does this mean ?" I loooked ahead and saw 
a few steps in advance a lot of cattle on the side- 
walk. Just as they saw the cattle they ran back 
and got hold of my fingers and continued to laugh 
and play, as much as to say : " We were afraid when 
we saw those cattle alone, but now we would laugh 
and play if all the cattle in the world were here, for 
we are with father." Let me say to you, if you 
have got hold of God^s hand, you are safe. When 
dangers and disappointments beset you, you laugh 
and rejoice. Lord, help and bless us, and save us. 



SAYINGS. 
What We Will Be.— We had a talking meet- 
ing in Trinity Church, Atlanta, in which I took up 
the different parts of an engine as an illustration of 
the various machinery of the great engineering power 
of the Church. One fellow got up and said, " I 
would like to be the boiler of the engine where the 
power is generated." Another said, '' I 'd like to 
be the cow-catcher, to keep the way clear." Another 



154 Sermons and Sayings. 

said, " I ^d like to be the head-light, to light up the 
track/' Another said, " I 'd rather be the whistle, 
and sound the praises of God all over the country/' 
Another said, " I 'd like to be the cab and protect 
the engineer/' And so they went on ; until one got 
up and said, '^ Brethren, I am perfectly willing to 
be the old, black coal they pitch into the furnace 
and burn up to generate the heat that moves the 
train on to glory." Ah, that is it. If we had more 
of the old, black coal sort, to pitch into the furnace, 
we would carry this train to heaven. O God, if 
necessary to the salvation of this city, let me be the 
coal, and be consumed in drawing this people to God 
and heaven. 

But One Question. — In the great work of 
redemption, I have but one question to ask : '^ Lord, 
what wilt thou have me to do ?" I '11 never stop 
to ask God what he is going to do and how he is 
going to do it and when he is going to do it; but 
the question that engages my mind is, ^^ Lord, what 
wilt thou have me to do ?" I never preach on the 
divine side of the Gospel. The water is deep out 
there, and little boats ought to stay near the shore. 
I 'd want to be a first-class swimmer if I should go 
out in the depths of divine mysteries and inquire 
of God what are the divine plans and the divine 
modes and the divine ^^when " and the divine ^^ how." 
These are questions that never bother me at all. I 
simply want to know what God wants me to do, and 
if he '11 tell me, I '11 do that and trust him for the 
rest. 



Skrmon VIII. 

E^XERNAIv F^UNISMNIKNT, OR. THE I^OQIC 
OB" DANINATION. 

" Because sentence against an evil work is not executed 
speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in 
them to do evil." — Eccles. viii, 11. 

THIS is a wonderful old book we preachers 
take our texts from. In the book of Genesis 
we read of the creation of the world and the origin 
of man. God devotes one book to tell me of my 
origin, and the thousand chapters that follow tell 
me where I am going. We spend an hour here 
to-day on the pathway to the grave. This text 
belongs legitimately to the conclusion of the ser- 
mon, which is the answer to a question I want to 
ask you. I want first to ask the question, and I 
want us to spend twenty or thirty minutes trying 
to answer that question, and then we will let God 
answer this question ; for we ought to be willing 
that God should answer all questions that pertain 
to life and salvation. 

The question which I now propound plainly 
stated is this : ^' Why will you continue in sin ?" 
Now, as simple as every word of that text is, may be 
we can spend a minute or two profitably in con- 
sideration of these words, " Why will you continue 
in sin ?" I do n't ask why you happen to be 
already a sinner. That involves three logical ques- 

156 



15B Seemoks and Sayings. 

tions, which we have not the ability to discuss. I 
do n't ask why you have come out to this service a 
sinner. That will involve exculpatory statements 
on your part^ which I have not the time nor dis- 
position to hear. But the question plainly stated is 
not, " Should you remain in sin ?'' or, " How you 
are a sinner ?'' but, " Why will you leave here an 
impenitent sinner?" And we narrow the question 
down a little, and we put it in this shape : " Why 
will youT^ I don't mean the one behind you, nor 
the one in front of you. I mean you. God bless 
you ! This is a very personal matter. 

You can 't get any body to die for you ; you 
can \ get any body to stand in your stead at the day 
of judment and be damned for you. You stand in 
your own shoes, as if you are the only individual 
that ever violated a law of God. This is pre- 
eminently a personal matter, and we do n't ask you 
why the world continues in sin or why the members 
of the Churches continue in sin, but we ask vou, 
" Why will you continue in sin another day, an- 
other hour, another week?" 

We say first : Is it because you are ignorant as to 
the nature of sin ? Does any man in this congre- 
gation give me as his reason for living to-day in 
sin and living on in sin, because he doesn't know 
what sin is? Is there a man here this evening that 
does n 't know it is wrong to drink, wrong to violate 
the Sabbath, wrong to live in neglect of his Chris- 
tian duty? Do you plead ignorance of the nature 
of sin? The world stands convicted at this point. 

You let a member of the Church do wrong, and 



Eteenal Punishment. 157 

you are the first one to see it. You let my foot 
slip, and you are the first man to see it and talk 
about it ; and your criticisms upon the life of the 
Christian people are an everlasting demonstration 
that you know what right is, and that you know 
what wrong is. You know there is a vast differ- 
ence between the way we look at men in Church 
and out of Church. The world expects something 
of a man in Church. I am glad it does. The world 
does n ^t expect much of you, and if it did it would 
be very much disappointed. Here is the difference 
between a member of the Church and a man out of 
Church. The member of the Church is a white piece 
of canvas, and if any thing is sprinkled upon him 
it makes a spot easy to discern. But that old sin- 
ner is a black, dingy piece of canvas, and you can 
just take any thing and rub upon him, and it does n't 
show at all. You let me go into a bar-room and 
take a drink of whisky, and it is wired all over the 
country, and read in every newspaper at the break- 
fast table to-morrow morning. You go in and take 
a drink every morning and nobody notices you. 
This is the difference between a gentleman and a 
vagabond. You let me go out on the streets and pro- 
fane the name of God, and it is flashed across the 
world, ^^ Jones is in the city, swearing. '^ You can 
swear every day. Nobody notices you. Nobody ex- 
pects any better of you for it. That is the difference be- 
tween a gentleman and a vagabond. I thank God, I 
have lived to see the day in my State when nobody 
will swear or drink whisky but vagabonds. You 
do n't like that ? Do you ? I do n't blame you. 



158 Seemons and Sayings. 

I would not either. Fifteen years ago I would have 
felt very much insulted if I heard a preacher say 
that. The truth is the same now that it was then, 
but, O, what a different fellow I am now from what I 
was then. Drinking is the habit of a vagabond, 
and profanity is the habit of a vagabond; and if 
you will be profane and swear you lack that much 
of being a gentleman. No gentleman will profane 
the name of God, and whatever else you lack, I am 
sorry to say that many of you come that much short 
of being a gentleman. 

Ignorant of the nature of sin ! Will you say 
you do n't know your life is wrong ? Every man 
answers back, and says: "That is not my excuse. 
I know what right is, and I know right is right. 
I know what wrong is, and further than that, I 
know wrong is wrong." Then we stop here and 
ask you this question : Is there any man that says, 
" The reason I live in sin is because I do nH know 
what the consequences of a sinful life are?" I 
know, forsooth, because this nineteenth century is 
wicked, there is a hell. I heard a minister say 
once, "That science is going to demonstrate that 
there is no hell." Said I, " When that delegation 
comes back I want to be on hand when they re- 
port." Science knows as little about hell, and what 
is in hell, as science knows about the birthplace of 
God. The biggest fool I know is that fool who 
gets into the biggest, broadest way to hell, and stops 
by the way and tries to persuade men there is no 
hell. The biggest fool is the man who spends his 
probationary existence in arguing that there is no 



Eternal Punishment. 159 

hell, and then lies down in hell forever, realizing 
that there is one. You poor dunce, what do you 
know of what is down there ? Did you ever at- 
tend a Universalist meeting? I was at a Univer- 
list meeting one day, and that day all the red-nosed 
drunkards and gamblers and rascals of the town 
had the front seats and amen corners. All I want 
to know of a preacher is, who has got the amen 
corners ? 

God pity you living in sin. What is to become 
of you ? Let this book speak out, and this is the 
only book that says any thing of the other side of 
the tomb. I will keep to this book until you find 
us something better, for this book says that "the 
wicked shall be turned into hell with all the nations 
that forget God.^^ I believe in a bottomless hell, 
and I believe that the wicked shall be turned into 
hell. I do believe that the righteous have hope 
after death, and eternal life is the legitimate end of 
a good man. I mean to say that God will not 
punish a single person except he fly in the face of 
the required law laid down on every page of this 
book ; except he lay his hand over every scar in his 
heart and says there is no scar there. I do believe 
if a man lives right he will get to heaven, and those 
who do wrong will go to hell. 

Do you think there is fire there? I don't know 
whether there will be any before you get there, un- 
less you take something with you to burn you 
through all eternity. Every sinner carries his own 
brimstone with him. No sir, that man says he 
knows the legitimate end of a sinful life is hell; 



160 Sermons and Sayings. 

and if you will tell me how long sin will last, I 
will tell you how long hell will last. "It is not 
because I am ignorant of the nature or consequen- 
ces of sin that I continue in it/' may be your reply 
to my question. Then what is it? Are you in- 
different to the results? O, how many men meet 
truth without a tremor in their muscles. When a 
man reaches this point, when you can't move him 
with truth, he is immovable. 

What stolid indifference we meet on all sides! 
Men know their life is short, and that they may be 
in their coffins before to-morrow evening's sun, yet 
they are indifferent to their condition. " Indiffer- 
ent?" You say, " I know what preachers think of 
me, and neighbors think of me as indifferent, but 
down in my heart I think and feel more than any 
body has discovered. I have gone home from 
Church with my Christian wife, her arm in mine, 
and I have heard my soul beat with conviction, but 
I would not have my wife hear it. Thank God, 
wherever else I went, I was never indifferent to the 
great truths of eternity. No, sir ; it is not indif- 
ference. I look as if I were, but I am not.'^ 

Then, we ask. Is it recklessness ? Is it because 
you know the truth and will dare the truth? Is it 
that? Recklessness is a poor thing in any world? 
O, how reckless some men are. We see that Alpine 
hunter as he walks on the narrow paths, with preci- 
pices on both sides. He realizes his risk, yet he 
walks on across the path, while the very dog that 
walks behind him will wince and turn. I have 
known men who seemed to be so reckless that they 



Eteenal Punishment. 161 

were unwilling to live on to their three-score years 
and ten, and lie down and die in the natural order of 
things. I see them at twenty years of age begin to 
drink, and they drink on until thirty years of age. 
They know they are about gone. ^^ One year more, 
just twelve months, is all I can last," they say. 
Yet the poor fellow goes on, and seems to be griev- 
ing for damnation. And I see him walk out on 
the street, all besotted with whisky, and pick a 
quarrel with a friend, and that friend shoots him 
down, and he leaps from the sidewalks of the city 
into hell. God pity you ! After all that has been 
said and done you will go, within twelve months, to 
a drunkard's grave ! Forty years old, and before 
you are forty-one you will fall into a drunkard's 
grave ! How is it ? 

Recklessness ! You say, " I know wrong is 
wrong, but I won't heed it. I curse publicly. I 
drink openly. I sin with a high hand." God pity 
you ! If I were going to sin I would crawl off in 
some dark corner and never let my example be 
seen to lead on any others. How reckless poor 
humanity is at times concerning the truth ! It hurries 
on to the edge of the precipice, and stands and 
shudders but a moment, then makes a leap, from 
which there is no recovering forever. 

"No, sir, it is not recklessness!" 

Then I stop and ask you this question: Is it 
because you are satisfied in your present condition ? 
Thank "God, no man was ever satisfied with himself 
as a sinner. Twenty-five years of the gall of bitter- 
ness and the bonds of iniquity have persuaded me 

14 



162 Seemons and Sayings. 

that no man would ever be satisfied with himself as 
a sinner. Like the rough sea, you have no rest. 
You are devoid of peace within your breast. Thank 
God, he will not let a sinner lie down and sleep on 
his way to hell. 

"1^0, sir, I am not satisfied with myself." 

And when those innocent children throw their 
lovely arms around your neck and look up in your 
face, in all the innocence of their nature, you say, 
" Of all the women that God ever gave children to, 
I am least calculated to lead them to God and ever- 
lasting life." 

" Satisfied with myself? No, sir. Nobody can say 
that away from God and on his way to perdition." 

Then we will ask again, is it because of your 
inconsideration ? I know sometimes a man will 
look at a thing and then look off. Do you know 
what bar-rooms are for, and billiard tables, and 
cards, and germans? They are tricks of the devil 
to keep your mind off of yourself. Sometimes men 
get conviction of the Divine Spirit, and they will go 
and dance it off; drink and swear and gamble it off. 
God pity a man who has convictions and will dance 
and curse them away; convictions that a lost spirit 
would give the world if he could have. If the 
devil can keep you busy all day in your store and 
make you dance yourself to sleep, he has got 
you pretty safe. There are members of the Church 
that rent houses for bar-rooms. You are a joint 
stock owner of that thing, and if you can tell me 
how a man of God can be a joint stockholder in a 
bar-room, then you have explained to me one of the 



Eteenal Punishment. 163 

profoundest mysteries of moral science. Every man 
belonging to a club is a joint owner of that bar- 
room. I have been expecting some of the high- 
bred gentlemen to come forward and defend the club. 
If I had such a nice thing I would just hire news- 
papers and defend it. And I will tell you that no 
bar-room, that no deck of cards, can be defended 
in heaven, on earth or in hell. You could not hire 
a decent idiot to sail into me on that question. I 
suppose some of you are mean enough to sail in, 
but you have got too much sense. I can associate 
with members of the Church, who belong to it, 
but when you set in to defend it, I would not wipe 
my feet on you. I am perfectly willing to give 
you all the time that I am not engaged in preaching. 

" It is not because lam satisfied with my present 
condition. It is not because I won^t think. I 
have thought, but doubts arise about these things." 

Is it because you are leading a sort of comprom- 
ise life ? Do you say, I am going to be religious 
after a while. There is not a lost spirit in hell that 
has not said the same thing. You are going to be 
religious to-morrow. All that is within you, be- 
tween you and eternal despair, is your heart that 
beats, and if that heart stops beating you are gone 
forever. " No/' you say, ^* it is not because I am 
leading a compromise life.'' 

Is it because a spiritual apathy has taken pos- 
session of you ? O, how men sleep over their eternal 
interests ! A man sleeping on the edge of a preci- 
pice, and he may go over forever ! The wife of Mr. 
Rogers, of Marietta, Ga., was indisposed one morn- 



164 Sekmons a^^d Sayings. 

ing. He sent a servant down street for quinine, 
and when he returned with it, his wife took the jire- 
scription, mixed it and swallowed it. She then 
went to the door and said, ^' Husband, that was not 
quinine I took just now/^ He ran hurriedly to the 
drug store. "What is that you sent my wife?'^ 
And the doctor answered, "I have sent enough 
morphine to your house to kill a dozen persons. I 
did it by mistake.'^ He ran back and got another 
physician and they went to his house and commenced 
to administer emetics. A death-like stupor came 
over her, and she turned to her husband and said : 
" Please, sir, let me go to sleep.'^ " O, no, if you go 
to sleep you will not awaken this side of eternity.^^ 
They walked her up and down the floor, threw cold 
water on her face and continued to administer 
emetics. Again the death-like stujDor seized her 
and she said: "Please, sir, let me go to sleep five 
minutes. ^^ " O, wife, if you sleep five minutes you 
will never waken up again." And they worked 
and wearied until four hours passed aAvay, and then 
the doctor said, " Now we have saved her." I have 
seen thousands with that death-like stupor upon 
them, and they say. Just let me sleep these last 
precious verses through, and as the last note dies 
aw^ay they are asleep, and when they awake they 
will open their eyes in hell. God pity a man that 
will sleep his eternal interests away. 

You say it is not ignorance as to the nature of 
sin ; it is not the consequences of sin ; it is not be- 
cause you are leading a compromise life; nor be- 
cause of inconsiderateness ; nor because you are 



Eteenal Punishment. 165 

sleeping through your interests. Is it because you 
have a conquered peace that defies all the bat- 
teries of Heaven ? Bishop Pierce was preaching at 
a camp-meeting in Georgia, and among those at- 
tending there was a man not a Christian. He was 
an old man, and sat out in the straw in front of 
the bishop. The bishop said, when he sat down, 
" Something said to me, ^ You are preaching the last 
awakening sermon that man will ever hear,' and 
the good power came to me, and I turned it upon 
the head of that old sinner. '^ He sat and turned 
and twisted in his chair, and bit his lips, and when 
-the bishop quit preaching he got up, went to his 
cottage and barred the door, fastened the win- 
dow, and prostrated himself on his face. By and 
by his wife came and knocked for admission, and 
the only answer she received Avas the groans of her 
husband. She looked through the cracks of the 
door and saw him prostrated on his face. She went 
back at 3 o'clock and he was in the same position. 
At sundown the battle was going on ; at 12 o'clock 
that "night the contest was still going on, waxing 
hotter and thicker, but grander in its results than 
the battles of Waterloo, or Gettysburg, or any bat- 
tle that earth ever saw. At sunrise the next morn- 
ing it continued, and at 9 o'clock it yet went on. 
At 1 o'clock the wife was standing opposite the cot- 
tage, and she saw the door fly open and she ran up 
to him. She could tell by the cold marble of his 
countenance that he had conquered. Yet it took him 
twenty-five hours to do it. That old man lived and 
died, but he did not have to fight any other battle. 



166 Seemons and Sayings. 

You have got to surrender to God this evening. 
The hell-spirit is here, and you have got to expel 
this spirit out of your heart. It may not take you 
twenty-five hours ; it may not take you twenty-five 
seconds to fight the last battle. How long will we 
go on in sin ? How long will God forbear ? Where 
does hope end, and where begin the confines of 
despair ? Will you take the step this evening from 
which there is no recovery ? 

In Ecclesiastes, chapter eight, eleventh verse, i& 
the logic of damnation. Because sentences are not 
speedily executed; because justice does not crush 
you down immediately, are you to go on to ruin? 
Because there are ten years between me and eternal 
punishment, shall I spend these ten years in sin? 
Because God is good, shall I keep on in wickedness? 

If that drunken man knew that in his next 
drunken dream God would send him to hell ; if that 
profane swearer knew that the next oath he swore 
God would send him immediately to hell, they 
would not drink or swear any more. Do n't think 
because the sentence is not speedily executed you 
can keep going speedily on. God help every one 
of us this evening ! I recollect that day in my ex- 
perience when I could look my precious wife in the 
face and say, ^^I have drank my last drop, wife." I 
recollect when I could look my friends in the face 
and say, ^' I have sworn my last oath.'' 

Do n't put it off any longer, until you are gray- 
headed. Choose you this day whom you will serve. 
If I were a young man I would want to be re- 
ligious. If I were an old man I would want to be 



Eteenal Punishment. 167 

religious. If the Spirit of God in Christ had always 
been cruel to me, I \vould serve him for what he 
was to my mother. O, how good he was to her. 
How he charmed her to his loving heart, and how 
sweetly she died ! If Christ had always been cruel 
to me I would love him for Avhat he was to my 
precious father. I would love him for what he is 
to my precious wife and children. I will love and 
praise him forever for what he has done for me 
and mine. 

S AY I N a S . 

The Stoey of Zaccheus. — Eepentance ! Re- 
pentance! I think I never, in my experience as a 
preacher, found a soul that was willing to give up 
sin, give up all sin, and stay at that point with the 
white flag run up, that God did not go to that soul. 
I recollect in my own experience, I thought I had 
cried a heap, and I thought I had mourned a heap, 
and I went along mourning and crying, and I gave 
up such sins as I thought I could get on best with- 
out, and when I quit crying and mourning and 
threw my sins down, I was at once conscious that 
God was my friend and that Christ was my Savior. 
How did they get religion when Christ was on 
earth? He saw Zaccheus up a sycamore tree. I 
do n^t know what he was doing there. But Christ 
saw him. Zaccheus was a rich fellow, and, I sup- 
pose, had pretty high notions, and Christ said to 
him, ^' Come down, Zaccheus, this day salvation has 
entered your house.'' And Zaccheus started down 
that tree, and got religion somewhere between the 



168 Sermons and Sayings. 

lowest limb and the ground. At any rate lie had it 
before he hit the ground. He said : " What I have 
taken wrongfully from any man I restore it to 
him fourfold.'^ He had a good case of religion in 
him when he hit the ground, there is no doubt of 
that. 

Eternal Life. — Blessed be God, I believe in 
eternal life. I can not live with any other thought. 
Just thirty years ago I tiptoed into my father's par- 
lor, one morning, and they said : " Be quiet, mamma's 
dead!'^ I was not old enough to understand it. 
I walked up to the casket and looked down upon 
my mother. She looked paler and sadder than I 
had ever seen her, and when they removed the lid 
father kissed her, and elder brother kissed her, and 
I kissed her, and I said : '' Precious mamma's lips 
are so cold." She has been buried in the State of 
Alabama thirty years, and if I were to go down 
there to-morrow and dig the earth off of my 
mother's body and disinter her bones, I suppose I 
could gather them all up in my hands, and as I 
stand there looking at my mother's bones, I would 
say: "Great God, is this all that is left of my 
precious mother ?" And as I stand looking at those 
bones my knees smite together, and I am in de- 
spair, and all at once a voice speaks audibly in my 
ear, and says: "This corruption shall put on incor- 
ruption. This mortality shall be swallowed up of 
immortality." And I look up, and say, "Thanks 
be unto God that giveth us the victory through our 
Lord Jesus Christ." 



Sermon IX. 

UNQODLINESS AND ^WORI^DLY LUSTS. 

"For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath ap- 
peared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and 
worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, 
in this present world." — Titus ii, 11, 12. 

THE honor of Christ and the salvation of our 
own souls depend largely upon our holding 
proper views of the Scripture and practicing its 
precepts. Ignorance is a sort of heterogeneous 
compound that neither God nor man can do much 
with. The fact is, we must know something be- 
fore we are capacitated to do something, and all 
intelligent action is based on intelligent thought; 
and there can be no intelligent thought unless we 
first know some things. The man who really knows 
one thing well is on the road to know a great 
many things, and the trouble, perhaps, with a large 
mass of humanity is, they have never known one 
thing well. 

" For the grace of God that bringeth salvation 
hath appeared to all men, teaching us,'^ instructing 
us, qualifying us. Teaching us what? "That 
denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we should 
live soberly, righteously, and godly in this pres- 
ent world.'' That is, in plain English, teaching us 
that we must cease to do evil, and learn to do well. 

Conversion is a very common term in the 
Church and in the pulpit. Sometimes we use it in 

15 169 



170 Seemons and Sayings. 

a very vague sense. Conversion, Scripturally, means 
simply two things: first, I have quit the wrong; 
and second, I have taken hold of the right. No 
man is Scripturally converted until he throws down 
the wrong and walks off from the wrong and walks 
up to the right and espouses the cause of the right. 
Religion is a two-fold principle, or rather it is a 
principle that enables man to discern the right and 
to do the right, to discern the wrong and to make 
him hate the wrong. There are two elements in 
every pious life: 1. Negative goodness; 2. Positive 
righteousness. Negative goodness is not religion. 
If negative goodness were religion, then one of 
these lamp-posts out here would be the best Chris- 
tian in town ; it never cursed, nor swore, nor drank 
a drop since it was made ; it never did any thing 
wrong. If negative goodness were religion, then a 
stock, or stone, or mountain, would be the best 
specimen of Christian this world has. Negative 
goodness is, perhaps, one of the halves of religion ; 
but genuine religion, Christly religion, means not 
only that a man is negatively good, but that he is 
positively righteous. There is no power in a nega- 
tive position or in being negative. Christ Jesus 
saw this, when he told his preachers to go forth 
affirming and preaching the Gospel, not to go con- 
futing the denials of infidelity. I never uttered a 
sentence in my life to prove that the Bible is true, 
I never spent five minutes in my life trying to 
prove there is a hell. I never spent fifteen seconds 
in the pulpit in my life trying to prove there is a 
God. Nobody but a fool needs such argument. A 



Ungodliness and Worldly Lusts. 171 

man told me once : " I do n't believe there is a 
God. I do n't believe I am any thing but mortal." 
Said I : "If I were you I would get me a little 
more hair and a tail and be a sure-enough dog — I 
believe I would." 

There is, as I said, no power in a negative force, 
and none in a negative position of any sort. We 
are not sent forth to deny any thing that any body 
says, but we are sent forth to affirm something. 
An aggressive Christianity is always affirmative. I 
am sorry for the preacher that has backsliden far 
enough to try to prove in his sermon that there is 
a God. I am sorry for the preacher that has got 
so low down in his theology that he is trying to es- 
tablish the fact that there is a hell. I know of men 
trying to establish the fact that there is no hell. A 
gentleman said to me the other day that the fact was 
nearly established. I said to him. " When did you 
startyour exploring party down there, and when will 
they return to report?" He said he had n't started 
any body and he wasn't looking for them to re- 
turn. Said I, " How are you going to prove any 
thing about it then?" And I want to tell you 
this much : The assertions of the word of God on 
all these questions stand unshaken to-day, and a lit- 
tle colored child of three years old in this city knows 
just as much about hell as any living scientist. I 
suppose some of the dead ones know more about it. 
There 's many a fellow that has written hell out of 
his theology here, but he won't be in hell fifteen 
seconds till he will jump and say, '^ My Lord! 
What a mistake I have made in my theology." 



172 Sekmons and Sayings. 

Bob Ingersoll was speaking on one occasion — 
I have a good deal of respect for Bob Ingersoll, 
a great deal more respect than I have for some 
members of the Church. When Bob says he does n't 
believe the Bible and does n't pay any attention to 
its precepts, they say they believe it, but do just as 
Bob does, you see. I can't stand that. And it 
is n't theoretical infidelity that is cursing this coun- 
try ; it is practical infidelity. Well, Ingersoll was 
lecturing — I believe it was in Milwaukee — and there 
were standing up in the corner of the platform 
where he was speaking three or four drunken men, 
talking in an undertone. That crowd felt they 
ought to take the amen corners on Bob; and all I 
want to know about any fellow is who takes the 
amen corners on him ; and when you find Bob 
preaching you will find the amen corners filled with 
old red-nosed drunkards and other vagabonds of 
the town ; they have rushed up and taken the amen 
corners. When Bob made the assertion, ^' There is 
no hell, and I can prove it to any reasonable man," 
he got the attention of that crowd, of course. They 
were interested at this point, and one of them 
straightened himself up, and staggered up to Bob 
and put his hand on his shoulder, and said, ^^ Can 
you, Bob ?" He said, '' Yes, I can." " Well," said 
the fellow, " do it, Bob ; and make it mighty strong, 
for I tell you that nine-tenths of us poor fellows in 
Milwaukee are depending on how you make that 
thing." 

So we say w^e never need to try to prove any 
thing that the Bible asserts. We are to preach the 



Ungodliness and Woeldly Lusts. 173 

word to the people and the Bible will take care of 
itself. The Bible was the guide of my mother. 
It was the stay of my father's life; it was a lamp 
unto his feet and a light unto his path, and he be- 
queathed it to me as his richest gift to his wayward 
boy. And I say to you to-night, take all other 
things from me and my home, but leave me my 

Bible. 

This precious book 1 'd rather own. 

Than all the golden gems 
That e'er in monarchs' coffers shone, 

Or on their diadems. 
And were the seas one chrysolite, 

This earth a golden ball, 
And gems were all the stars of night, 

This book were worth them all. 

Ah, no, the soul ne'er found relief 

In glittering hoards of wealth ; 
Gems dazzle not the eye of grief ; 

Gold can not purchase health. 
But here a blessed balm appears 

For every human woe, 
And they that seek that book in tears. 

Their tears shall cease to flow. 

Bless God for the Bible, which is the guide of 
my life and the inspiration of my soul. 

We said a moment ago that its positive and nega- 
tive features — these two combined — give the Chris- 
tian life force and power. There is no power in 
electricity until you bring the two forces, positive and 
negative, together. You see that negative electricity 
gathering about the trunk of this old oak tree ? That 
tree has withstood a thousand storms, and now we 
see this negative electricity climbing up its body 
and settling in its foliage, and now the positive 



174 Seemons and Sayings. 

electricity passes over it in the cloud, and negative 
strikes positive, and the two forces come together in 
the top of this old oak tree, and it comes with a 
crash and splits that oak tree from its topmost twig 
to its lowest roots. There 's power. There ^s om- 
nipotence. And so in the life of every good man 
who is negatively good and positively righteous. 
Look at George Whitefield with his whole nature 
surcharged with negative goodness and his life full 
of positive righteousness. We see him going out to 
Moorfields near London at three and four o'clock 
in the morning ; and with 10,000 lanterns blazing 
all around him, he preaches the Gospel. Before day- 
light and sun-up he has a thousand penitents and a 
thousand converts, and does more before breakfast 
than all the pulpits in London could do the year 
round. That looks like business. 

Negative goodness! The Lord knows I have 
a contempt for the goody-goody members of the 
Church. Old Brother Goody-Goody and old Sister 
Goody-Goody are just goody-goody, and so good 
they are good for nothing ! Have n't you seen 
'em? I believe in doing good. I like goodness. 
I despise every wicked act that a man can do. But 
I tell you this, I have had members, as a pastor, 
who would work and do their level best, but every 
three or four months they would get drunk in spite 
of every thing I could do. When they were sober 
they went up to their eyes in religion and in work 
and in righteousness. I hate this thing you call 
drunkenness, and no man hates it more than I do ; 
but I would rather have a member of the Church 



Ungodliness and Worldly Lusts. 175 

who gets drunk every three or four months, but 
works when he is sober, and does his level best, 
than one of these sober fellows that ain't of any 
account anyhow, and that might just as well be 
drunk or just as well be dead. God pity these 
lazy, shiftless fellows. All they want in God's 
world is somewhere to sit down and somewhere to 
spit. Spitting room is a big thing with lazy men. 
Teaching us that we must quit the wrong; 
"that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we 
should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this 
present world." Teaching us this fact, and the first 
lesson Christ ever taught man here was this : " You 
are a sinner ; you are a wrong doer ; you ought to 
cease to do evil ; you ought to forsake your sins." 
And I will say right at this point, I could never lay any 
claim to the salvation of Jesus Christ until I bound 
all my sins up in one common bundle and threw them 
all down, and walked over the river of resolution, 
and set fire to the bridge behind me, and stood and 
watched till the last expiring spark dropped into 
the water. Then I turned my back on sin and 
said, "I am in now for salvation or nothing;" and 
I hadn't got fifteen steps from the bank of that 
river till I was in the arms of God, a saved man. 
And I declare to you to-night, you men of the 
Church who say, " I can 't live without sin," that 
no man ever found God, and no man was ever con- 
verted, until he quit his sins. That's all there is 
about it. When I stand up and preach against sin 
and sinners, the Church cries, like Macbeth in the 
tragedy, " * Lay on, Macduff.' Give it to him. He 



176 Seemoks and Sayings. 

ought to have it." But when I preach at the 
Church and say, "You men who profess to be Chris- 
tians, you are living in sin," they say, "O, he's one 
of these sanctificationists, and he 's putting on airs." 
You want me to give it to these old sinners, but let 
you alone. 

Ah, me ! brother ! If God Almighty expects 
these sinners to quit sin, what does he expect of 
you who profess to love him, who profess to be 
Christians? That's the way to talk it. Cease to 
do evil and learn to do well. I want to say here 
in my place to-night, that I profess to know a few 
things along this line, and propose to say them to 
that member of the Church that dances and attends 
theaters and plays progressive euchre — and that's 
the best named game I ever heard. Progressive 
euchre ! Progressive euchre ! — double-quick to hell, 
right along. And I say another thing. There is 
no progressive euchre player in this house that 
ought not to be indicted for violating the laws of 
the State and be put in one of the jails of this 
county. How do you like that? It is just gam- 
bling scientifically, magnificently, gloriously, socially, 
and so forth. That 's what it is. And I '11 tell you, 
in our State we can indict a man and put him in 
the penitentiary for playing progressive euchre with 
his neighbors any time, and I want to see the day 
come when, if Christians haven't got faith enough 
in the Lord Jesus Christ and their profession to 
bind them to decency and right, the law will help 
us to make our members decent. I do, I do, sure. 

And the man who is running these things — I 



Ungodliness and Worldly Lusts. 177 

tell you the truth, brethren — that man never was 
converted, that man never has repented, that man 
is still in the bonds of iniquity and the gall of bit- 
terness. You ask me why? Well, I got religion 
fourteen years ago last August — I was right sure 
there — and it knocked that card-playing, theater- 
going system out of me right there ! And I have 
never had a symptom of it since ; and whenever the 
day comes in my religious experience that I want 
to play cards, and want to drink whisky, and want 
to attend theaters, I want to drop down on my 
knees and tell the Lord : ^' My religion is played 
out, sure. I never felt this symptom since I was 
converted, and now, Lord, as with most Methodists, 
my religion has left me. Give it back to me again. '^ 
That ^s the way I talk ; and all I can say of you 
Presbyterians and Christians and Baptists that are 
not on that line is, you never had any, because you 
can 't lose yours, you know ! When our members 
go to the devil, we say, " They have lost their re- 
ligion,^^ and when your members go to the devil, 
you say, "they never had any." Well, it doesn't 
make any difference which way it is, the devil has 
got them, sure. 

"Teaching us that we must cease to do evil and 
learn to do well.'' This is the Christian truth that 
teaches me to deny ungodliness and worldly lust, 
and to live soberly as to myself, righteously toward 
my neighbor, godly toward Him unto whom I OAve so 
much. Now, here are the three positive attitudes 
of the Christian: 1. He is a sober-minded man in 
his relations toward all the world around him. 2. 



178 Seemons and Sayings. 

He is honest in his dealings with his fellow man, 
and 3. He is godly in his conduct toward his Maker. 

I like one of these sober-minded men that takes 
a particular view of every thing and goes for the 
long run all the time, and cares nothing for count- 
ing the present results, but is looking to the great 
long run. He is the same every day, and the same 
under all circumstances,, and the same everywhere; 
he is just as good in New York as he is in Cincinnati. 

There is many a fellow that is a good Christian 
in this city, but if he were to wear an indicator 
when he went to New York, when he got back his 
wife would quit him, in my candid judgment. I like 
a religion that keeps me as good off of my knees as I 
am on my knees; just as good on the outside as I 
am on the inside ; just as good in New York as I 
am at home; just as good anywhere and everywhere 
and forever, as my promises and my vows demand 
I should be. I like that sort of Christianity — a 
sober-minded sort, that regulates all my life. I like 
that. 

Sober-mindedness — that 's the regulating force 
of every good man's life ; that makes him step along 
in an even, smooth way toward the good world. 
Some people think heaven is away off yonder, and 
some think hell is away down yonder, but I want 
to tell you that heaven is on a dead-level with every 
good man's heart, and I want to tell you the way 
to heaven is a dead-level. Christ dug down the 
mountains and filled up the valleys, and the way to 
heaven is a dead-level, and the way to hell is a 
dead-level, and there is only one road in the moral 



Ungodliness AND Worldly Lusts. 179 

universe^ and one end of that road is hell and the 
other end of the road is heaven, and it does n't mat- 
ter so much who you are^ as which way you are 
going. Do n't you. see ? Soberly, righteously, a 
sober-minded man. 

You look at that stationary engine out yonder 
at the saw-mill. You see little governors playing 
around over the steam chest, and you see there that 
saw as it runs into that large log. That 62 inch 
circular saw runs right into the log, and the little 
governors let down, and additional steam is thrown 
against the piston head, and you see that saw wade 
right along through the log and run out at the other 
end, and the little governors lift up and let off the 
steam, and the saw runs at the same revolution to 
the minute, whether it is in or out. 

There is the Christian man, like Job. O, my, 
he was a sober-minded man. In prosperity, and 
when adversity came, and the last dollar was swept 
away from him. Job run in and out of the log; and 
he was running the same revolutions to the minute 
when he ran into infirmity and disease and pain, 
and as he ran right through and came out, run- 
ning the same revolution to the minute, he said : 
" Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. " 
And when they placed the charge against his char- 
acter that he had sinned and done wrong, he went 
right along through that and came out on the other 
side, and the Lord God said to him, " Job, take my 
arm and walk with me, and I will make your latter 
days more prosperous than your former days. ^^ 

I like a sober-minded man — a man who will do 



180 Beemons and Sayings. 

the same thing all the time ; not one of those men 
who will do something during the revival meeting, 
and who does n't recollect that he did any thing out 
of the revival, and one day he will shake your 
hands, and another day he will hardly know you 
when he meets you on the street. I do n't like one 
of this persimmon-headed sort of fellows; I want a 
fellow who knows you when he meets you, every- 
where, and will do the same thing everywhere and 
under all circumstances. Sober-minded ! A Chris- 
tian man ought to be sober-minded, and rest on 
this one promised — " all things work together for 
good to them that love God '' — sober-minded as to 
ourselves and righteous towards our neighbors. 

I will tell you if there is any thing that relig- 
ion demands of a man, it is that he be downright 
honest. Honesty ! As somebody said : "An honest 
man is the noblest work of God,"' and that is the 
grandest utterance outside of the lids of the Bible. 
"An honest man is the noblest work of God ! " 
And when I say an honest man, I do n't mean a 
man simply that pays his debts — some of us ain't 
honest enough to do that. What this world needs 
right now is a larger course of downright honesty ; 
that 's it. I will tell you, the Church of God will never 
take this world until we get honest. There are too 
many men in the Church boarding with their wives — 
agents for their wives. I want to die the day be- 
fore my wife appoints me her agent. Do you hear 
that? What! — a man in the Church of God and 
a prominent character, and that man living in a 
$30,000 house, and riding around in a §1,200 



Ungodliness and Woeldly Lusts. 181 

turnout, while the poor widow woman whose money- 
he has is walking these streets with scarcely bread 
to eat ! If there is a hell at all that man will go 
there as certain as God is just. 

Honesty ! We want in this country men in 
the Church of God who will do what they say they 
will do. That 's it. Why, sir, a man's Methodism 
is n't worth any thing to him in this country, and a 
man's Baptism or his Presbyterianism isn't worth 
any thing to him. You go down to a store to-mor- 
row and want a thousand dollars worth of goods on 
credit, and the fellow says : " Can you give me any 
security ?" '^ No ; I am a Methodist." '' O, Lord ! 
You can 't run that thing on me here." And let a 
Baptist go down there and say: "I'm a Baptist 
and I want credit." " Law, me ! If you will come 
in here and let me show you how these Baptists 
have gouged me, you would not play yourself oif 
as a Baptist." And so with every denomination. 
I tell you to-night, the Church will never do the 
work God wants her to do until she is honest — 
honest towards God and honest towards man. I 
want to see the day come when all the Churches 
in the world will have the character in commercial 
life that the old Hardshell Church has in Georgia. 
Down at Athens, in that State, an old Hardshell 
walked in one day to a store and said to the mer- 
chant : " I want a couple of hundred dollars' worth 
of goods this year on credit." The merchant looked 
at his old hat and jeans pants, and concluded that 
was not the sort of a man to trust, and told him he 
would not give him the goods. The fellow turned 



182 Sermons and Sayings. 

and walked out, and the merchant asked a clerk in 
the store : " Who is that man V' " That 's Mr. So- 
and-so; he belongs to the Hardshell Church up 
here." The merchant went out after him and said : 
" Friend, come back here. Are you a Hardshell ?" 
He said, '' Yes." " Well," said the merchant, " you 
can have all you want ; you can have all I have 
here in this store on credit for as long time as you 
need." And down in Georgia the Hardshells will 
turn a member out of Church for taking advantage 
of the homestead exemption act, or going into 
bankruptcy, just as quick as they would for steal- 
ing ; they will that. 

Honesty ! I like that. We have collection laws 
all over this country, and we have ruined our peo- 
ple; we have made our people dishonest by our 
laws — that is the truth about it. They are so con- 
structed that a man can, by a mere technicality, 
wipe out all his debts, and compromise with his 
creditors. 

Out in Waco, Texas, last year, there was a 
merchant thrown into bankruptcy, and he compro- 
mised his debts at a hundred cents on the dollar — 
just think of that — and paid it, every cent. He 
compromised his debts at a hundred cents on the 
dollar! He was a fool, wasn't he? He was a fool! 
They say in one heathen country they make every 
holiday a day for general handshaking among all 
enemies, and every fellow pays every dollar he owes 
in the world. That's a grand holiday, isn't it? 
They are heathens, though, ain't they? They must 
be heathens if they do that way. Make friends 



Ungodliness and Worldly Lusts. 183 

with all my enemies and pay every dollar I owe 
every holiday ! Nobody but a heathen would do 
that, would he? Righteously do the right thing; 
do the right thing. 

And I want to say that those bankruptcy and 
homestead laws have been the curse of this country 
in all ages of it. I want to see the day come — and 
I beg your pardon for the expression — I want to 
see the day come when you can sell a man^s shirt 
off his back to pay his debts. I ^d rather die than 
to be in debt, and have things that other people 
ought to have. That^s the way I look at it. 

You say, " Yes, you are talking mighty big.'^ 
Yes, and IVe talked little, too; I want you to un- 
derstand that. The devil bankrupted me for both 
worlds, and when God converted my soul and I was 
called into the ministry, I was hundreds of dollars 
in debt, and I know how a man feels. I know how 
it cows a man, and I know how I have gone up 
with $2.50 at a time to pay a debt, while my wife 
had but one dress and I had one suit, and we were 
living at starvation rates, my wife doing her own 
ironing and her own nursing, and I splitting the 
wood and working and saving every nickel I could 
to pay my debts ; and in spite of that I have heard 
of men saying : " If that fellow, Jones, would pay 
his debts I could have more confidence in him.'' 
I paid every cent, thank God! a hundred cents on 
the dollar, and I was just as good a man after I 
paid as I was before. And, thank God, that a poor 
man can be an honest man! Thank God, that is 
true. 



184 Seemons and Sayings. 

1^11 tell you the sort I find in my Bible. It is 
related that Obadiah borrowed |500 from Ahab 
and died before the money was due. After his 
death Ahab sued the widow for the debt, and lev- 
ied on her and her two children for the money. 
They could levy on children in those days, and 
they were to be sold in this case to pay the debt. 
The mother was in distress, and she hunted up — I 
had almost said a lawyer, but she never went within 
a mile of one, God bless you. She hunted up 
the best old prophet of God on the face of the earth. 
She stated her case to him and said : " My husband 
died owing this money and they have levied on my 
two children to pay this debt. What must I do ? " 
The old prophet looked at her and said : " What 
have you in your house ? " The poor woman re- 
plied, trembling : " Nothing but a pot of oil, and 
that is to embalm our bodies with." The prophet 
never said a word about the homestead, but he said : 
" You go and pour out that oil and sell it, and pay 
that debt." She went home and borrowed vessels 
and drew enough oil out of the pot to pay the old 
debt, and she had more oil left afterwards than 
when she commenced to draw it. That was God 
Almighty standing by an honest woman, do n't you 
see ? I have seen it repeated again and again, and 
I tell you that God Almighty will take care of hon- 
est men, if he has to put the angels on half rations 
for twelve months. 

I was once appointed to a certain work in a cer- 
tain county on a Georgia circuit. The year before 
the whole country was blighted with drouth. The 



Ungodliness and Woeldly Lusts. 185 

people had not made a bale of cotton to twenty 
acres, when they ought to have made a bale to every 
two acres. Corn was not a paying crop, and mer- 
chants were pressing their claims. I commenced 
preaching righteousness. I said : " I know your 
soil has been parched by the drouth, I know your 
crops are failures, I know you are poor, but '^ I con- 
tinued, " listen to me. If the sheriff comes on you 
and takes your house and your stock, and your all, 
let him take them, and then walk out with your 
wife and children, bareheaded and barefooted, so 
that you can say, ^ We are homeless and breadless, 
but my integrity is as unstained as the character of 
God.' '' 

O, for an unstained character! That is what 
we want in this country. O, for an honest man ! I 
tell you there are too many men in this country who 
have widows' and orphans' legacies in their pockets, 
and, I am sorry to say, too many of that sort have 
broken into the Churches of this country, and every 
dollar of that money that you keep in your pocket 
as a preacher, and in your treasury as a Church, 
the devil will make you pay back with compound 
interest. He Avell knows that that is his money, and 
he does not loan his money without interest, and 
big interest at that. 

'^ Teaching us that we should live righteously." 

Righteous men — I like righteous men. James 

Thomson, the poet, was righteous in this sense. 

Lord Lyttleton says of him, that he wrote ^' no line 

which dying he could wish to blot." You are a 

merchant. Can you say on your dying pillow, '^ I 

16 



186 Sermons and Sayings. 

never performed a deed which I would now undo? 
Samuel, the prophet, was a righteous man, and wlien 
he walked out to his burial place, all Israel gathered 
around him, and the clear voice of the old prophet 
rang out as he asked these questions : " Whom have 
I cheated ?'' ^^Whom have I defrauded f' "Of 
whom have I received a bribe of money to blind 
my eyes V^ And all Israel answered back, " No 
one/' O, that was a grand victory. 

But, brethren, the man who does not recognize 
his obligations to God is but half a man at best. 
I have my relations toward my family, and my re- 
lations toward my country, and my relations toward 
my God. I will meet the demands of my children 
and my home. I will meet the demands of my 
country. I will meet the demands of the God that 
made me and them. I am good for all worlds. A 
godly man is one that does every thing with refer- 
ence to the great eye of God that is looking down 
upon him, a man that is godly in his life and char- 
acter, and that does right toward the God that made 
him. Where do we find examples of godly men? 
St. Paul, the author of this text, was a godly man. 
He lived for God, and counted all things as lost 
that he might please God. In his dying moments 
he sat in his dark dungeon and wrote in his last 
letter to Timothy : " The time of my departure is at 
hand.'' 

O, what a thought! St. Paul meant to say to 
him : " I shall have a cold supper to-night and a 
cold breakfast in the morning; I shall sleep on a 
hard bed to-night, but I shall take dinner in heaven 



Ungodliness and Worldly Lusts. 187 

to-morrow with God and the angels.'^ He talked 
about his departure as a school boy talks of leaving 
school for home, and when his head was severed 
from his body God stooped down, picked up that 
bloody head, and placed a crown of everlasting life 
upon it. He was a godly man, and God will take 
care of that sort of man, living or dying. 

Just such a man as this died some months ago, 
and when his large family of Christian boys and 
girls stood around him, he struggled for breath in 
the last extremities of life. Just as his moments 
were drawing to a close he seemed restless and 
wanted to speak. His children's attention was at- 
tracted by his looks, and they said: ^^ Father, is 
there any request you wish to make ? If so, tell us 
what it is.'' He caught his breath and said, 
^^ Bring — " but, breaking down, he could not utter 
another word. His children gathered close around 
him and said, "Father, tell us what you want." 
Again he said, " Bring — " and could not utter an- 
other word. The children bent over him, and said, 
" Father, what do you want brought ?" Presently 
his system relaxed in death, and with all his re- 
maining energy his lips uttered the words: 

" Bring forth the royal diadem, 
And crown him Lord of all." 

Then the soul swept out of his body and he 
never breathed another breath. God help us to 
live righteously, soberly, and godly in this world, 
and to look forward with blessed hope to the glori- 
ous appearing of the great God and our Savior, 
Jesus Christ, 



188 Seemons and Sayings. 

At times within the past ten years I have thought 
of going back to the practice of law, and of accum- 
ulating a fortune that my family might be provided 
for, and of preaching the Gospel in after life ; but 
with the blessed hope of God before me I have con- 
tinued right on. My eyes are on something better, 
grander, and nobler. When kind friends in Nash- 
ville said: "Here is a ten-thousand-dollar 
home, and we will give thousands in bonds 
if you will make your home in our midst," 
I replied ; " No. In our own quiet little cottage 
my wife and children and myself love God and are 
striving to get to heaven. Excuse me. I love you 
just as much as if I accepted it." Then my wife 
said to me : " Husband, I am prouder of you for 
that than for any other act in your history. " 

And I want to say to this congregation that I 
am getting higher and higher. T sympathize a good 
deal with the eaglet caged up yonder. Now a kind 
friend, pitying its drooping condition, opens the 
cage door and lets it out. I see it leave its cage 
and turn its eye to the sun and to the mountain- 
tops. Its ruffled feathers begin to smooth down, 
and it raises its wings and shakes them for a mo- 
ment. I see it fly up into the air and poise itself 
on its wings. It looks back toward the cage and 
utters a scream, as much as to say, " Farewell, cage ; 
farewell, imprisonment and weary hours !" I see it 
fly higher and higher, until at last it steadies its 
wings just in sight, and I hear it scream again. It 
seem to say, " Farewell, earth and imprisonment and 
cage and dreary days." Higher and higher it as- 



Ungodliness and Worldly Lusts. 189 

cends and sails aloft to light on the mountain top, 
free as air. Brethren, the soul of man, that has 
been ruffled by ten thousand cares, some of these 
days will look toward that blessed hope of God, 
plume its wings, and fly upward. And the higher 
we go earth shall hear our voices, growing the 
fainter, saying, ^^ Farewell, cares, imprisonment, and 
earth ! ^' Higher and higher we shall go, until at 
last we fly off in a bee-line for the other world. 
Brethren, let us get above worldly care and sin and 
temptation, and let us strike a bee-line for that home 
beyond, where sin and suffering are felt no more. 
May God bless you all, and may you ponder over 
these words in the spirit in which they have been 
uttered. If you do not like any thing that has been 
said, and if you come and apologize, I will forgive 
you, for I never bear malice to any body in this 
world. 



Skrnion X. 

LAW ANID ORDER.— HKLF> KAOH OTtlKR. 

"And let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season 
we shall reap if we faint not. — Gal. vi, 9. 

BRETHREN, I want to preach from two sides of 
this text to-night, one-half to you as Christians 
and the other half to you brethren — I mean what I 
say — who are not Christians. You are my brother, 
but I shall preach the first few minutes from this 
text to Christian people. 

" And let us not be weary in well doing, for in 
due season we shall reap, if we faint not.'^ God 
says if we do n't weary in well doing, we shall reap. 
I trust that in thirty days from this good hour 
every Christian here can write " T. P." opposite 
this verse in the margin of his or her Bible — "tried 
and proven '' to be true. God says if we would 
not grow weary in well doing we should reap — 
reap a harvest of husbands and wives and sons and 
daughters for garners in the sky. Now, brother, 
this is a declaration with a promise attached — if 
you won't grow weary in well-doing you shall reap 
a harvest. 

I wonder what that "well-doing" referred to 
in this verse is? I will drop back a few verses 
and find out. Brethren, first, well-doing in a 
Christian life is this : " Brethren, if a man be over- 
taken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such 
a one in the spirit of meekness ; considering thyself, 
190 



Help Each Othee. 191 

lest thou also be tempted." Thus I learn from the 
lesson before us that the first duty of every Chris- 
tian man is to ignore himself, and crucify himself, 
and live only for the good of others. We never 
have much trouble after we have gotten rid of our- 
selves. My biggest job is managing myself, and 
I^d rather undertake to control and manage Cin- 
cinnati than to manage myself. 

I can get the police to help me manage Cincin- 
nati, if I can get them straight to start with. I can 
get the Law and Order League and the Committee 
of One Hundred, and get help from various other 
directions, to help me control this city. lUl tell 
you another thing : I hope when God blesses Cin- 
cinnati with another election — I refer not to any 
previous election, or to any man who ever held the 
office of mayor — but I trust that the next mayor 
you have will enforce the laws of the city if he has 
to die in the ditch in his endeavor to keep it 
straight. I'll tell you another thing: If I were a 
citizen of Cincinnati I would die by the Law and 
Order League. I would stand up with the citizens 
of the Committee of One Hundred until my feet 
flew from under me. I would go into every thing 
and stay with every thing that looked towards law 
and order. Understand that? It is your only 
safety as a city; it is the safety of the commonwealth 
of each State, and the safety of municipal cor- 
porations — the enforcement of law. Law is made 
not for good citizens, but for bad citizens, and there 
isn't a law on the statute books of Ohio that is 
odious to law-abiding people. What dp you say to 



192 Sermons and Sayings. 

that ? I am ready now and ready forever to die by 
the laws of my State, good or bad. I am branch- 
ing off from my text, but what I have said is Gospel 
just as much as any thing I could say. 

God bless you people of Cincinnati, and rally 
you round the code of your city, and the laws of 
your city, and help you to stand by them and to 
see them enforced, and if any fellow does n't like these 
laws let him emigrate — you have no use for him, 
nohow ! This is a free country. If he does n't 
want to stay in a law-abiding city, why, let him 
emigrate, and if you all have n't money enough to 
buy him a ticket, if he will write me a letter I '11 
furnish him a ticket, for the sake of the love I bear 
to you all. Law and order, righteousness, let it 
reign on earth, and let all good citizens stand by it. 
That's it! If I were mayor of this city next Sun- 
day and Monday, there would be a thousand fellows 
in your lock-ups, and station-houses, and jails, on 
Monday night sure. Put that down ! 

Every man in this town that opened his bar-room 
on Sunday I would put in jail, if I had to call out 
the militia of the city to help put him there. Every 
bar-room door that is flung open in Cincinnati on 
Sunday is against the law, and in direct opposition to 
the law of your city and of your State; and, brethren, 
in the name of God, let 's enforce the law, or let 's call 
our Legislature home, and quit paying them to go 
up there to Columbus and enact a set of rules and 
laws that they do n't intend to carry out. Abolish 
the Legislature, burn the code, or make up your 
mind to stand up for law and order, God bless 



Help Each Othee. 193 

the Law and Order League and the Committee of 
One Hundred ! 

If there ^s a saloon-keeper in Cincinnati that 
doesn^t like the way things are run, tell him to 
emigrate, demijohn and all — you would n^t miss 
him ! You can well spare twenty-nine hundred 
saloon-keepers and beer-gardens, and then have one 
hundred of them left, and the Lord knows that's 
enough. A hundred saloons ought to do you, if 
you ain 't the greediest crowd I ever struck. If we 
can 't do any thing with law and order on these 
saloons, let's starve them out. I understand that a 
good many of them have got to that point now that 
they can 't settle their bills. They say they never 
saw business so dull in their line in their life. 
Thank God for dull business along on that line ! 

Brethren, stand by your Law and Order League, 
by your Committee of One Hundred, and by your 
mayor in the enforcement of the law, and not only 
stand by your mayor, but tell him if he doesn't pitch 
in and enforce the law he can never be elected dog- 
pelter in this town, much less mayor again. The 
mayor is n't the boss of the town. He 's the servant 
of every body and any body, and, brethren, let's 
make our servants do what we want them to do. 
That ^s the way. 

Law and order ! Why, see what this little move- 
ment here has already done. You've shut up the 
theaters here on Sunday, and I '11 tell you, if you '11 
push the battle on you will do like the citizens of 
St. Joseph, Mo. When I went there, an honest 
preacher, the pastor of a Church in that city, came 

17 



194 Seemons and Sayings. 

to me and said : ^'Brother Jones, don^t open your 
mouth "about the liquor traffic here or they'll put 
dynamite under the house you sleep in and blow 
you up.'' "What?" said I. "They'll kill you be- 
fore twenty-four hours if you ever denounce the 
liquor traffic, and they '11 do it with dynamite/' said 
the preacher, earnestly. " If they blow me up with 
dynamite," said I, "I'll get a fine momentum, and 
I '11 keep on all the harder. The tendency of the 
flash of this thing is upward, and it'll give a fellow 
a good start. I like that." 

Well, out there in St. Joseph I turned my guns 
loose on that traffic, and in less than thirty days 
from the time I left ther* they had overhauled the 
180 bar-keepers, found 180 true bills against them, 
indicted them, brought them up before the court, 
and they walked up to the judge and took solemn 
oath that they'd never sell another drop of liquor 
on Sunday if th^ judge would only be light on them 
that time and let them offi They knew they were 
doing wrong, and they persisted in it until they 
were brought up sharply. Law and order has got 
to prevail in this city, and if it does, you 're going 
to see another state of things in Cincinnati. You 
good people are in the majority. 

It is ^11 a great big lie about the hoodlums run- 
ning this town. I know some of the best citizens 
of this city are Germans, and I have received let- 
ters while I have been here from German citizens 
that have brought joy to my heart. Thank God for 
every German in this city that is for law and order ! 
Thank God for every American here that is in favor 



Help Each Othee. 195 

of law and order ! In this democratic country, I mean 
republican country, the majority rules. In a repub- 
lican form of government the majority always rules, 
and the good citizens of this town are in that majority ; 
and, now, let 's come forward and dare to assert our- 
selves in favor of law and order and righteousness. 

Well, I must come to my text. What I have 
been saying is good gospel, and it will do your 
children good after you are dead and gone if you 
will follow that kind of gospel; and the Lord knows 
I did n't come to this city to get up a shout-and-go- 
round corn-stalk meeting, where they all shout and 
afterward go on with their devilment, but I came 
here to get up a Ten-Commandments revival, a 
Sermon-on-the-Mount revival, and to preach right- 
eousness among the people. 

I will tell you another thing; the responsive 
hearts and the responsive presence of the people 
here in this hall to the Gospel as it has been 
preached have convinced me that Ohio and Cin- 
cinnati are overwhelmingly in favor of law and 
order, and may God bless you for showing it. 

But, brethren, I must return to my text : " And 
let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due 
season we shall reap if we faint not.'' The first 
duty of every man is to ignore himself and his 
own purposes and desires and intentions, crucify 
himself and live only for the good of others. 
That's it. O, how I love to see a self-sacrificing 
man — a man that loves humanity better than he 
loves himself. I like that sort of a man. He is 
an honor to his race and a blessing to the world. 



196 Seemons and Sayings. 

We have a man down our way in Georgia; 
he's a little Methodist preacher on a circuit now. 
Whenever I w^alk into the presence of that man I 
think he's the largest man I ever looked at, and he 
just expands in my presence when I look in his 
face, and I get whittled down until I feel I'm 
no bigger than a mole -hill beside a majestic 
mountain. Why does he look so large? Because, 
when I look into that face, I 'm looking into the 
face of the most unselfish man I ever saw. He 
does n't care one cent for himself. He does n't 
live or do for himself, but every thought of his 
life, every act of his life is, "How can I help 
some one else ?" He 's the happiest man, and 
the most glorious being I ever looked at, and I 
trace it all to the one source, that he 's so supremely 
unselfish. He just lives for other people. Brother, 
you '11 never be worth any thing until you can get 
yourself down and get your foot squarely planted 
on yourself, and say, " Now, you lie there. If you 
get up I '11 mash your mouth for you." When you 
do that you get in a position where you can help 
some one else. Blessed be God, I have got myself 
out of the way, and have nothing to look after now 
but other people. There's nothing in the way now, 
and, with my whole self in the background, I have 
nothing to do but to live and act for others all the 
day long. 

This text says : " If a man be overtaken in a fault, 
ye which are spiritual restore such a one in the 
spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou 
also be tempted." Your first duty is to live for 



Help Each Other. 197 

your brother. I 've often heard people say, " I have 
no time to look after other people. I ^m doing first- 
rate if I can get into heaven myself. I ^m in big 
luck if I can get there myself without looking after 
other people.'^ Brother, you Ve made a mistake 
here as long as eternity. Listen to me, if I just- 
wanted to make sure of damnation I would just 
settle it, ^^ I ^11 never try to help any body else in 
this country. I will spend all my days helping 
myself.^' What is hell at last? It's the very 
quintessence of selfishness, and selfishness is hell, 
and there is not an element in hell that does not 
enter into selfishness; and the supremely selfish man 
has already lighted the fires of hell in his soul that 
shall barn forever and forever. A selfish man ! Just 
as I am unselfish I am lovable, and just as I am un- 
selfish I am a blessing to the world. Just as I am 
selfish I am unlovable and a curse to the world. 

" Live for myself! '^ Why, what is it that makes 
a man sell whisky ? Selfishness ! What is it that 
makes a man gamble ? Selfishness ! What is it 
that makes a man steal ? Selfishness ! Do you 
catch the idea ? In all the devilment that people 
have ever done in this world there is a seed at the 
bottom of the tap root of the whole thing, and that 
seed is selfishness. All that is good on earth to- 
day grows in this soil we call unselfishness. Divest 
yourself, brother, of all selfishness, and strike out 
to do good for the world. 

I will tell you another thing. As Christian 
people we ought to join hands here now as a great 
army of Christians, and march to the front hand in 



198 Sermons and Sayings. 

hand, heart to heart, faith to faith, love to love; 
march straight along as Baptists, Methodists, Pres- 
byterians, Lutherans, and Christians of all denomi- 
nations. We must join hands and march to the 
front, and let us say to this grand army, " We will 
hang together, and stick together, and fight to- 
gether, and die together, and we will all go to 
heaven together, or we will all go to hell together. 
We will stick to one another world without end ! " 

There's many a preacher that has been unable 
to get up a successful meeting in his own Church, 
and if some other preacher gets up a big meeting 
in his Church, and four or five hundred souls are 
converted and brought to God, this poor preacher 
looks as if he 'd been sick for six months ; he just 
goes drooping about. I do n 't mean any Cincinnati 
preacher — I mean a Georgia preacher. I have seen 
them. They were so glad their brother preacher 
was having such a successful revival that it was 
like to have killed them, they just fell off pounds 
and pounds. I mean these Georgia preachers — I 
have n't any reference to any Cincinnati preachers. 
I have seen that the case with a preacher; he 
couldn't be happy over another preacher's revival 
to save his life. 

It takes a good deal of religion for som*e pastors 
to stand by and see the pastor of another Church 
having such a big time with a revival. It takes 
more religion there than anywhere else in the world. 
It does that! I have been along there. I am a 
human being, and all of us preachers are human 
beings. Brethren, I want to see the day come when 



Help Each Othes. 199 

you will rejoice in every good act, for there never 
was a revival in this town that did n^t help every 
Church in the town, if they put themselves in a right 
attitude towards it. Every revival in any Church 
in this city, no matter if not more than five hun- 
dred are out, will do good to every other Church, if 
they put themselves in a right attitude to the work 
of Christ. 

If I never had saved a soul in the world, and 
the Lord allows me in heaven with the workers that 
did save the souls, I 'd stand and shout hosannas 
over the work of the others. It takes a good deal 
of religion to do that. We want religion enough 
to stand by and enjoy another fellow's doing what 
we tried, but were unable to do ourselves. It takes 
one hundred and eighty pounds of grace to the square 
inch right there to let me crow over and enjoy an- 
other man doing a thing that I could n't do myself. 

I have known preachers — Georgia preachers, you 
know — to try for two or three years to get up a big 
revival in their Church, and they could n't get up 
any, and then they lammed in and preached hard 
against revivals. They tried to have them them- 
selves and couldn't, and then they just lammed in 
and preached as hard against them as they could. 
Lord, have mercy on selfish preachers ! If God will 
take all the selfishness out of the hearts of all the 
preachers, myself as well as others, we will be in a 
position to lead the ranks of God into the belching 
mouths of the cannons of the devil and run him 
back into his citadel and bombard it until we run 
him out and capture this world for Christ, 



rtAn 



200 Seemoi^s ahd Sayings. 

There are preachers in this town that have n't 
been in this hall at all; and mark what I tell you. 
The preachers of this city that have stood aloof — I 
want them to hear this, I hope it w^ill do them 
good — when they saw God was with it and saving 
souls, and yet kept away, will have to make out 
that a clear case of insanity was upon them during 
these meetings or go to hell, in my candid judg- 
ment. I do n't care, brother, if he is your pastor 
and does rack around to see you every week, and 
talk with you on religion. I tell you when 
God Almighty's cannon and musketry begin to 
roar, every loyal citizen will rush to the front and 
help fight the battles. If your pastor, brother, has 
been hanging back, you tell him he ought to go 
before a jury and be tried for insanity, and carry a 
good certificate with him to the judgment, for he'll 
need it. 

Selfishness ! Good Lord take the selfishness out 
of our preachers and out of our Churches, and then 
we '11 win this world to Christ. We 're not run- 
ning this thing for ourselves, but running it for 
Christ. 

Now, suppose an insurance company had a hun- 
dred agencies and agents in this town and they 
were to pull against one another, undercut one an- 
other, as the Churches pull against and undercut 
one another. Let a disaffected member get mad at 
one Church here because the preacher raked him 
about progressive euchre, and leave, another Church 
will say, " Come, live with us." All the same 
Church, all agents for the same house and com- 



Help Each OtheS. 201 

promising and cutting rates! Why, there isn't an 
insurance company in America that wouldn't send 
their inspector of agencies out here and discharge 
every agent in the town if they ran on that schedule. 

Selfishness is the curse of the world, and unsel- 
fishness is a blessing to the world. You have as 
unselfish preachers in this town as walk the face of 
the earth. You have the others too ; I never call 
any names, but every fellow knows his number. If 
this cap fits any preacher in this house let him wear it. 
If it doesn't fit you throw it away and get a better 
one. People say I arrogate a great deal to my- 
self. But I do not intend to take any thing to 
myself. I do n't want any praise from any body. 
I do n't care what you think of me so long as you 
think well of my Savior and do what he wants 
you to do. There are no selfish aims or ambitions 
to be gained in this fight, and God has blessed me 
in proportion as I have been unselfish. I don't 
want any praise; as I said before, I'd just as soon 
you'd throw mud on me as. praise me. Brethren, 
with an unselfish spirit, let 's join hands and march 
on to glory and to God with this city. 

In St. Joseph, Mo., those brothers gathered and 
worked and worked for weeks together, and there 
they are to-day with more than a thousand souls 
that they reaped since the union revival closed. 
And now, brother, here is a harvest-field of one 
hundred and fifty thousand souls away from Christ; 
and I hope every pastor will call his Church to- 
gether on Sunday at 11 o'clock, and give them the 
plan of the battle, and tell them what he expects 



202 Seemons and Sayings. 

them to do. And brother and sister in Christ, if 
you never did a faithful month^s work for God in 
your life, and you never intended to do one month's 
work, you tell your pastor next Sunday morning at 
11 o'clock: "Brother, put me down in the list of 
the soldiers that will go in to conquer or to die/' 
And if you will do that, in less than six weeks 
from to-day I will show you fifty thousand souls 
converted to God and added to the Churches. The 
doors are wide open. O, let us fight this old world 
and get in the rear of this old world, and drive 
them into the kingdom of God, and there is noth- 
ing else here to do. And brother, let us go with 
unselfishness into this fight, and all meet and pray 
together, and then they will scatter out to the dif- 
ferent Churches in the city, and save this town 
from death and hell. 

I will tell you another thing. Every man of 
righteousness ought to join in the battle. And you 
that are not members of the Church, surrender your 
heart to God to-night, and Sunday morning at 11 
o'clock come in and join some Christian Church, 
and be one of the most valiant soldiers of the Cross 
for the next five or six weeks in bringing to Christ 
those around you. If a man is trying to help others 
to Christ, it is the best evidence that he has got it 
himself Go to work, and go to work for Christ 
now. As a good man said, " I will pay the balance 
in good works as long as I live. I am going to 
devote my life to God and humanity." 

I will tell you another thing. You can 't be too 
patient toward one another. These new converts 



Help Each Otheb. 203 

will need your care and mercy and good will and 
help every day — mark that. I want to say, I fre- 
quently hear this question: Do Joneses converts 
stick? Now, let me tell you, I never run any in- 
surance on them at all ; no guaranty. I do n't run 
any guaranty on my converts. They may, every 
one, be in the penitentiary before this time next 
year. But I will tell you one thing, every convert 
of these meetings will average up with the Churches 
they join. Do you hear that? Average up with 
the Churches they join. A woman said to me once, 
" Brother Jones, we had a revival here two years 
ago, and seventy-five joined our Church, and now 
where are they, those seventy-five ?'' She said, "I 
don't believe in revivals.'' I said, "Sister, ain't 
those seventy-five here in town ?" She said, '^ Yes, 
but I never see much of them. Why," she says, 
" some of those converts are getting drunk." Said 
I, "Ain't some of your old converts getting drunk." 
" Well, yes," said she ; " but some of the new con- 
verts don't come to meeting." "Don't some of 
your old ones stay away, too ?" said I. " Well, yes," 
said she ; " and some of the new converts play cards." 
Said I, " Do n't some of the old ones play cards, 
too?" " Well, yes." Said I, " Sister, the new con- 
verts will live right up with the old ones; some of 
the new ones are getting drunk, so are some of the 
old ones ; some of the new ones play cards, so do 
some of the old ones; some of the new ones are 
staying away from meeting, so are some of the old 
ones." 

It is not so much the weight and bigness of the 



204 Sermons and Sayings. 

infant as it is what sort of a mother has God given 
it to take care of it ! There is many a Church in 
this country — O, what mothers, what mothers, what 
mothers they are ! Ah, me, there is that mother 
with her sweet, beautiful babe yonder who cares 
nothing for it ! She keeps it in the nursery, and the 
mother does n^t see it once a week or once a month. 
O, such a mother is n't worthy of a child ! She 
isn't worthy the name of mother. The Church in 
this town is a mother to its converts, and there 's 
many a Church in this town that cares nothing for 
its converts. They hire a preacher to look after the 
Church, hire him by the month, and pay him by the 
month to look after the babies, and I tell you there 
is a sight of them to look after. I would rather 
preach three hundred and sixty-five sermons every 
year for one of your Churches, than to look after the 
babies for one week. It 's a solid fact. It is whine 
and whine, and • cry and cry ; and soothing syrup 
and soothing syrup. How many bottles do you 
reckon have been used in this Church? I suppose 
you can go into the closet and find hundreds of 
empty bottles of soothing syrup. And before the 
pastor can get one fellow quiet, another breaks out, 
and it is running with the spoon and bottle all the 
time. 

Obliged to do it ! It is n't right the way we do 
with our preachers ; it is not right before God. I told 
them the other day up at Trinity, that in some of 
these Churches the whole Church will be in the 
wagon, every single member of the Church up in the 
wagon, some laughing, some cursing, some drinking, 



Help Each Other. 205 

some playing cards, some shouting, but the whole 
lot up in the wagon, and the poor little old preacher 
out in the shafts trying to pull the whole thing 
along. There goes the poor fellow under this big 
load, just tired to death, and here some fellow 
wipes his mouth after taking a drink, and says, 
" Jab him up a bit. ^^ I say, get out of that wagon 
and catch hold and pull or push at once. O, 
brethren of the ministry, God bless you, hitch up 
that crowd to the wagon, and get up on the spring 
seat and drive a while ! 

It is a heap easier for you all to pull the 
preacher, than it is for the preacher to pull you. 
Let us swap about with him ; let us all get out of 
the wagon a while. And about the only time you 
get out at all is when you go down a steep hill, and 
then you get out and push. The Lord have mercy 
on that sort of a man. Live for others, work for 
others. Your preacher needs unselfish members. 
God needs unselfish members. The world needs 
you every day. The poor, weak brethren in the 
Church need you every day. 

Now this incident. I read it a few months ago. 
It was related by Bishop Marvin. He said that in 
one of his charges once, when he was a young 
pastor, he commenced a meeting on his circuit at a 
church, and he said at that church there were from 
two to three hundred members. He commenced 
preaching, but the Church did n't get aroused. And 
he said when he had preached about two weeks, 
seventy-five had professed conversion and joined 
the Church, but the Church never got waked up. 



206 Seemons and Sayings. 

And before the first day of next January — this was 
in July — before the first day of January seventy- 
two of the seventy-five had gone back to the world, 
just as bad or worse than they were before. He 
said right over there on that same circuit there 
was another Church, the most faithful Church he 
ever saw, with two of the most faithful class- 
leaders he ever knew. He commenced his meet- 
ings there, and the Church was on fire with love to 
God and man. And that is pure unselfishness, love 
to God and love to man. And he said while preach- 
ing at that church one night, he noticed an old 
blacksmith, dingy, black, and dirty, come in and 
take a back seat ; and after the service one of the 
class-leaders came up and said : " Brother Marvin, 
did you see that old dingy, dirty blacksmith take his 
seat?" ''Yes," he said. ''Well," said the class- 
leader, " he is the worst old drunkard this country 
possesses, and I was glad to see him here." The 
bishop said : " You ought to invite him back 
again." " Well, I tried, but he was gone before I 
could get to him." "Well," said Marvin, "you 
must go to see him." 

Next morning, bright and early, the class- 
leader rode up to the blacksmith's house and said 
to him : "I am mighty glad I saw you at the 
church last night, and I want you to come again." 
Said he : "I love to hear that man preach ; he 
caught hold of my heart; but," said he, "look at 
these ragged clothes and this debauched body; and 
my poor wife in rags, and my children in their 
desolation ; we can 't go to Church ; got nothing to 



Help Each Other. 207 

wear." " Ah/^ said the class-leader, " I know that ; 
but I am going to bring you a suit a-piece for the 
whole family, and come with my wagon and take 
you to Church.^' He did. On that night the 
blacksmith, his wife, and two oldest children were 
there, and knelt at the altar. The next thing, the 
blacksmith and his wife and two oldest children were 
converted and joined the Church. And when the 
blacksmith walked up and joined the Church, the 
sinners out in the back of the house said : ^' The 
first time that old blacksmith goes to town and 
gets drunk they '11 lose him." 

The meeting closed. They got him to pray in 
his family ; they carried him work to his shop, and 
got the neighbors to patronize him, and kept him 
busy at his trade; and before two years he had 
bought himself a nice cottage and paid for all his 
tools, and was one of the respected men of the com- 
munity. About six months after these two years 
were over the Western fever broke out in the set- 
tlement. People all took a notion to go West, and 
the blacksmith said he thought he would go. And 
the class-leaders said : " Sir, we do n't want you to 
live out West; the company is too bad, and we 
want you to stay here with us, with your family, 
and go to heaven with us. " He said : " I can do 
better with my children out there. " They could n't 
persuade him, and in a short time a small company 
started out West with about forty wagons, and the 
blacksmith and his family with them. They crossed 
the Mississippi River, and one of the company wrote 
back, and among other things said : ^^ We gather at 



208 Sermons and Sayings. 

the blacksmith^s wagon, and he reads his Bible and 
offers family prayer with all the company every 
night and morning. ^^ And when they got the next 
letter they had arrived at their place of destination, 
and they were almost afraid to open it, but it said : 
^^ The blacksmith has gone right into Church with all 
his family and gone right to duty.^' Every letter 
they got said, " He is faithful to God and duty.^^ 

About six months after he went out one of the 
class-leaders one morning got a letter with a black 
margin all around the envelope, and he opened it, 
and it was from the wife, bathed in her tears, and 
it read : ^^ My husband died shouting happy last night, 
and went home to heaven, and he told me to write 
back to his faithful class-leaders and tell them an- 
other one is saved by grace and gone home to God.^' 

O, for that spirit of religion in this country ! 
That is what we want. O, my brethren, let us 
stand by one another ; let us die by one another ! 
There is too much doubt and hesitancy on the mind 
of the people. I recollect when Sam Small was 
converted. O, how dissipated that man was! He 
told you all himself. I do n't go behind his back ; 
I have said all before his face that I say here, and 
I am no prouder of my precious child, or of my 
wife, than I am of Sam Small. Thank God for the 
grace that brought him to me. When Sam Small 
was converted to God I heard him talk once, and 
my wife and friends said, "Sam Small has got 
religion, just as sure as Sam Jones has got it; he 
has got it, certain. '^ He has. He has got the 
right aim. 



Help Each Othbe. 209 

The first thing I did, I threw my arms around 
him and said, '^ Brother, come and go to work with 
me in the cause of God.^^ The wise brethren 
walked up and said, " Brother Sam, you had better 
be very particular; if his foot were to happen to 
slip it would be death on you, and you had better 
be mighty particular now.'' " If he falls down,'' 
said I, "he shall fall on me; I will hold him up, 
and stand by him until I die myself And thank 
God Almighty, he never fell on me. I have never 
held up a pound for him, but I have got so now, 
thank God, I can lean on him, and he is help- 
ing to hold me up. Glory be to God for the 
spirit that will throw his arms around a poor fellow 
struggling, and help him on to God ! 

I never see a poor drunken man but I want to 
throw my arms around him and keep them there. 
I never see a poor, weak brother come up that I 
don't wish I had nothing else in the world to do 
but to keep him out of temptations and keep him 
straight until he gets firmly on his feet. They 
need your nursing; they need your help. But O, 
what is the use of bringing them in and nobody 
taking care of them? Take hold of souls and 
bring them through to God. You who are spir- 
itual go and love him, stand by him, do your best 
for him. 

I learned how to love a man once by a game of 

town ball. When I was a boy we used to play 

town ball. But I will tell you what, if I had a 

dog and he were to go out and look at a game of 

base ball an hour, and then come back in my yard, 

18 



210 Seemons and Sayings. 

I would go out and kill him, I would. None of 
your base ball in mine. There is not a more cor- 
rupting thing this side of hell than base ball. I^ow, 
put that down. They all thought I had forgotten 
that. I never have had any use for it. The idea of 
a great big young buck twenty-five years old run- 
ning all over creation for a ball. . If your mother 
wanted you to cut a stick of wood she could n 't get 
you to do it to save her life, but you dress up in a 
fooFs garb and run after a ball, the hottest day, 
until your tongue lolls out, you fool you. That 
isn't all. It is one of the finest fields for gambling 
in America. And that is not all. I Avould n 't 
wipe my feet on any crowd that would go out and 
play base ball on the Sabbath. Those are my sen- 
timents. I couldn't put it in anymore concise 
way than that. I don't know whether you agree 
with me or not; but you understand me, I reckon, 
do n 't you ? I will let my boy play ball until he 
is ten years old, but after he is fifteen years old I 
believe I will wear him out with work if I catch 
him at such foolishness as that. 

Men, stand by one another and help one another, 
and when one falls down let us catch him imme- 
diately and straighten him up, and then call to 
other brothers, and say, ^' One of you get under this 
arm and one under the other," and let him hobble, 
on toward glory, and when he gets into heaven his 
crutches will be there too, blessed be God. It is 
about the only way you will ever get to heaven. It 
is to go there as a crutch under some poor fellow's 
arm, and the only way he will get there is for you 



Help Each Othek. 211 

to piny the crutch for him. O, thank God, the 
crutches and the lame have to go in together, and 
they rejoice together in the name of the good work. 

Stand by one another ! Help one another ! Do 
your duty toward one another ! And when a poor 
fellow falls down do not look at him and say : "Just 
look at that brother now; he joined the Church 
during the revival, and now is drunk; look at him!^' 
There is the poor, fallen brother in the ditch; he 
is drunk, beastly drunk ; and here are two brethren 
standing off, looking at him and saying, one to the 
other, " I told our pastor not to take him into the 
Church." Do you want to know whom God thinks 
more of, that one lying there, or these two ? That 
sot lying in the gutter is better than a hundred such 
in the sight of God. That poor, drunken fellow is 
better in the sight of God than these Pharisees that 
will see their brother sink and then say, " Just look 
at him." A brother would run to him and drag 
him out of the ditch and stand by him and say, 
'^ You have done wrong, so have I, and we will 
quit now and try to live right." 

There is many a poor fellow who has gone to 
hell from this community that Christian people 
never made one effort to save from death and hell. 
They just go to the dogs all around us. 

I have talked more than an hour, and now I 
am going to close with just these words. I never 
preached on the subject that I started out on in 
my life, and I have gone off in this direction, and 
I hope God will use it to your good. 

Now a word or two to you men out of the 



212 Seemons and Sayings. 

Church. Let me say this to you : There is a great 
responsibility on you. You have seen rich men in 
the community ; you have seen a rich man and 
you have seen all the poor people turn away ; and 
you hear the poor people talk and say : " That 
rich man doesn't care any thing about us poor 
folks.'' The truth of the business is, these poor 
people imagine that that rich man does n't care any 
thing about them; and when they see him they 
treat him coolly, and he does the same, for the poor 
fellows don't know what else to do. Now you 
have imagined many a time the Church did n't care 
any thing about you and that these people did n't 
want to have any thing to do with you, and you 
have turned away yourself. Turn to the Church 
and say, "Give me help and assistance," and they 
will take you by the hand and take you to glory 
and to God. When you do that once, men of the 
world, you will be on the right direction. 



SAYINGS. 

The Best Pay. — I received this in the con- 
tribution basket last night, and when this much 
comes to me it seems as if there can 't be any thing 
better than this to follow. This little note was in 
an envelope in the basket last night; and it seems 
as if this little scrap of paper pays me for every 
lick I have struck: "Brother Jones, I am in your 
debt, sir, as follows : For quitting and swearing 
off drinking, $100,000; for quitting and swearing 



Help Each Other. 213 

off from sweariog, $100,000; for quitting all my 
meanness, |1,000,000; for learning to love our dear 
Lord better than life, $3,000,000,000. Credit, $1. 
I hope to be able to pay the balance by doing good 
the rest of my days.'^ 

Brethren, here's really the pay in this service. 
Thank God for the privilege of doing good. That 's 
one reason why I never asked you, brethren, for a 
cent of money, and I told you I did n't want a cent, 
for I knew God would pay me, and here 's the pay. 
If this man feels that way, how do you reckon his 
precious wife and children feel about it ? Glory to 
God for bringing heaven to one home in Cincinnati ! 
Thank God for every home that has been blessed! 

I thought once to-day I would have all the com- 
munications I got in the basket last night compiled 
into a little pamphlet, for it 's rich reading. One 
dear woman writes : ^^ I have n't a cent in the world 
to give, but I want to tell you that you have brought 
me to the dear Savior, and he is mine, and I am 
happy in his love." I tell you in heaven we will 
be paid, when money and dollars and cents have 
been long ago forgotten. Thank God for pay that 
I can cross the river with — I do n't mean the Ohio 
Eiver, but the river of death to the city of God ! 



Skrmon XI. 

OODLINKSS AND I<IKK— OLORYAND VIRTUK. 

" According as his divine power hath given unto us all 
things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the 
knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue. 
Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious 
promises ; that by these ye might be partakers of the divine 
nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world 
through lust. And besides this, giving all diligence, add to 
your faith virtue ; and to virtue knowledge ; and to knowl- 
edge, temperance ; and to temperance, patience ; and to 
patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; 
and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things be in 
you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be bar- 
ren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
But he that lacketh these things is blind, and can not see 
afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old 
sins."— 2 Peter, i, 3-9. 

LET us notice two or three of these verses as we 
go along. ^^ According as his divine power 
hath given unto us all things that pertain to life 
and godliness.'' Did you ever face this fact in your 
religious experience that there may be a thousand 
reasons why some men do not succeed at law; that 
there may be a thousand reasons why some men fail 
in merchandising; that there may be a thousand 
reasons why some men fail in agriculture; but do 
you ever meet this fact, that there is no reason in 
heaven or earth or hell why any man should fail to 
be an earnest, faithful Christian ? There are reasons 
why men fail in every other profession and every 
other calling, but there are no reasons why any 
214 



Godliness and Life. 215 

man should fail in being a successful Christian. If 
I am not a successful^ ^^PPy^ earnest Christian, it is 
not the devil's fault ; it is not the fault of the grace 
of God ; it is not the fault of this book ; it is not 
the fault of any thing without ; but my trouble lies 
deep within. 

" All things that pertain to life and godliness.'' 
Let us face this fact a moment. If I am a good 
man, I am a good man on purpose. If I am not a 
good man I am purposely not a good man. No- 
body ever was religious by accident. The grace of 
God never made any man religious. The Bible 
never made any man religious. Preaching never 
made any man religious. These are all grand in- 
strumentalities in the hands of God, but no man 
was, and no man ever wdll be, religious until he 
settles it once uncompromisingly and forever : " I 
will be religious, whether I am any thing else or 
not. If I fail in every thing else, I will succeed in 
this. If I do n 't do any thing else, I will do this." 
With the great one who succeeded in the highest 
sense — St. Paul — he says, ^^This one thing I do." 
Suppose I succeed. I am a success for all worlds. 
Suppose I fail in this and succeed in every thing 
else. I am but a beggar ! 

The next verse reads : ^^ Whereby are given unto 
us exceeding great and precious promises, that by 
these ye might be made partakers of the divine na- 
ture, having escaped the corruption that is in the 
world through lust." What does that mean — 
" Being made partakers of the divine nature? " This 
is, perhaps, one of the plainest, clearest statements 



216 Sermons and Sayings. 

of the beginning of a Christian life. Here is a man 
who has been, perhaps, intemperate at times, worldly- 
minded, covetous, wicked, wayward, godless, and 
now comes a pivotal moment in his life. Perhaps it 
is the death of his precious wife ; perhaps it is the 
burial of one of his sweet children ; perhaps it was 
an earnest sermon; but some time something some- 
where touched his heart and touched his conscience, 
and he says to himself: "I believe 1^11 decide 
upon a better life. I ought to be good. I'm 
sorry I'm bad. I would give the rest of my days 
to nobler, better things.'' He eschews evil and 
learns to do good, and on and on he walks away 
from evil and walks into good, and may be six 
months later there is a happy, joyous. Christian ex- 
perience brought about. When was that man made 
a partaker of the divine nature ? It was in that 
moment away back yonder when he said : " I am 
wrong, I ought to get right;" that moment when 
he said : " I 'm bad ; I 'm sorry I am. I have 
offended God and lived in sin. I would seek 
the favor of God and live in righteousness." It 
was away back there that that man was made par- 
taker of the divine nature, and he yielded to and 
responded to and fostered and nursed that divine 
touch, until, by and by, the divine seed implanted ' 
in his nature, budded and blossomed into a glo- 
rious religious experience. 

I used to think that if God could n't get all the 
heart he would n't take any. I made a mistake 
there. Brother, if you will surrender God an inch 
of space in your heart to-night, God will occupy 



Godliness and Life. 217 

that space, and God will do for a man and do in a 
man just in proportion as God can get hand-room 
and foot-room to work. And God will work that 
space so well and the results will be so glorious 
that if we will surrender every space and every 
place, God will go on with the conquest until he 
shall possess the whole. But if you draw the line 
any way and say to God, ^^ Thus far thou shalt go 
and no farther/^ then God will surrender to you the 
space he already occupied, and the last state of that 
man shall be worse than the first. 

^^ According as his divine power hath . . . 
made us partakers of the divine nature. ^^ Is there 
a man here to-night, twenty or thirty or forty years 
old, that down in his conscience is saying, '^ I am 
bad ; I am sorry for it. I ought to be good. I want 
to be good?'^ The good Spirit of all grace has 
touched that man's heart. And now, brother, you 
foster and cherish and nurse and perpetuate that 
desire in your soul until it shall spring up and 
develop into a burning, hungering and thirsting 
after righteousness. Do n't despise the day of small 
things. A great many in the Church and a great 
many out of the Church are waiting for some won- 
derful transformation. They are waiting for some 
wonderful something to possess them. A great 
many of us are alike. We want such an experience 
as that of St. Paul, for instance. Well, St. Paul 
was a wonderful man. He was big game, and God 
used big ammunition and big guns on big game, 
understand that. Paul — it took the biggest cannon 
of heaven, loaded to its muzzle, to bring him 

19 



218 Sermons and Sayings. 

down, and it brought him down to surrender. And 
there ^s many a little fellow in this country want- 
ing God to shoot off that same gun at him. And 
if God did, it would n't leave a grease spot of you, 
you poor little fellow. God is too merciful to turn 
such guns loose on your sort. God never shoots 
cannon balls at snow-birds. Do n't forget that. 
Fancy a snow-bird perched on the twig of a per- 
simmon bush and saying, " I '11 never move until 
a cannon ball hits me '' — and that will be his last 
move. 

^^ According as his divine power hath given us 
all things that pertain to life and godliness, through 
the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory 
and virtue; whereby are given unto us exceeding 
great and precious promises." O brother! how 
divine the truth that God always promises to 
help a man to be good if he wants to be good ! 
And my theology at last, brother, is in but two 
sentences. God can not arbitrarily make any man 
a good man. . If he could, we would all be good, 
for he wills that we should all be moral. The devil 
can not arbitrarily make any man a bad man. If 
he could, we would all be bad. My theology is 
wrapped in these two declarations : If you want to 
be good, say so, and God will help you ; if you 
want to be bad, say so, and the devil will help you. 
I needn't tell you that. You know that. 

^' Exceeding great and precious promises" — prom- 
ises that come down to me, and reach out to me, 
and overshadow me, and that are like a great gran- 
ite rock under my feet as I walk on the promises 



Godliness and Life. 21^ 

of God. There is no bankrupting the soul that car- 
ries in its consciousness the promises of God. Now, 
brother, let us take a sensible view of this. Let's 
you and I not wait for any thing, but let 's you and 
I decide to-night. "Yes, I want to be good, and 
I decide to be good." And that is n't all. " I be- 
lieve God will help me, and I 'm going to start out 
on that line to-night.'' The greatest curse of men is, 
they are going to be good after a while. "I will 
be good next year," and so on. Well, if you and 
I are ever going to be good, it is time we begun. 
And if we are never going to be good, let 's say so 
and settle it forever. 

Now after a start like this, he says : " And be- 
sides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith 
virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowl- 
edge temperance, and to temperance patience, and 
to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly 
kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity. For, 
if these things be in you and abound, they make 
you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful 
in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But 
he that lacketh these things — " Listen ! " He that 
lacketh these things is blind and can not see 
afar off." 

You see the seeming contradictory senses in 
which these words are put, " Is blind and can not 
see afar off." He can see all around him. He can 
see stocks and bonds and money, and worldly goods 
and fruits. Ah me ! He is what you might call a 
near-sighted Christian. He can see every thing 
about him ; he can see the profits and losses of 



220 Sermons and Sayings. 

each day's business ; he can see his mansion and see 
his town property and see his railroad interests, and 
so on, right about him, but he "is blind and can not 
see afar off/' Ah me, brother! It is these long- 
sighted fellows that win. This one that looks 
ahead into eternity can say, "My treasure is laid 
up at the right hand of God, where neither moth 
nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not 
break through and steal/' 

You can tell a near-sighted man. Nothing out 
of the range of his sight excites him or moves 
him. That man standing by you there — you see a 
cyclone coming, but he stands there without a mo- 
tion of his body. These men that can not see into 
eternity, and can not see beyond, are never excited. 
They call these other men " religious enthusiasts." 
And I declare to you, to-night, we have got a great 
many near-sighted Methodists and Baptists and 
Presbyterians and Episcopalians, and so forth, in 
this city. That father, there, can see his boy going 
in business, and can see him succeed in business; 
but how about his boy's soul and eternity? He 
can 't see any thing there. That mother can see 
her daughter projected into society, and see her 
marry well, and see her move off to herself and 
start well in life; but how about her daughter's 
eternal's interests ? She can 't see any thing there. 
O, the near-sighted people of this world. They are 
"blind and can not see afar off." 

And listen : " And have forgotten that they were 
purged from their old sins." There is not an old 
backslider in this town but what, when you see him 



OODLINESS AND LlPE. 221 

down, will say, ^^ I sort of doubt whether I ever was 
religious. I don't think I ever was a Christian/' 
Forgets, you see ! There is not a miserable back- 
slidden person in this community to-night, but 
what, when you bring him square to the issue, will 
tell you, "Well, I thought I was converted then, 
and I thought I enjoyed religion, but I think now 
I was mistaken/' " Think now I was mistaken !" 
Have n't you heard that all around? "I'm afraid 
I was mistaken." Poor fellow ! He has got into 
things that have so engrossed him, and so taken 
up his time, he has forgotten all about how 
good God was to him, and how God blessed him, 
and how he had lived for months, and may be 
years. " Blind and can not see afar off, and hath 
forgotten that he was purged from his old sins." 
I do n't know what you '11 do with all this sort un- 
less you turn them over to us Methodists. 

I want to tell you of another thing right along 
at this point. There are ten, there are twenty 
warnings in the Word of God to Christian people, 
lest they fall, lest they go back — there are twenty 
warnings to Christian people to hold fast their pro- 
fession of faith, to where there is one call to the 
sinner to come to repentance. And now what do 
you say ? It looks as if there is danger along that 
line. Now, "giving all diligence." O me! A 
religious life is a pious life, it is an earnest life, it 
is an energetic life, it is a life in which every man 
ought to lay aside every weakness and the sin that 
doth so easily beset him and run with patience the 
race set before him. 



222 Sermons and Sayings. 

An energetic, an enthusiastic life ! Ah me ! It 
is a life like that of St. Paul. When once convinced, 
and when once he swore his allegiance to Christ, 
from that moment until he passed out of the world 
he was a grand rolling ball of fire all through his 
life and all through earth. O brother! ^^ Giving 
all diligence V^ 

I can tell when a man is in earnest. If you let 
me watch the first three months of that young law- 
yer's life after he has just chosen the profession of 
law — if you let me watch the first three months of 
his life after he makes his profession, chooses his 
profession — I do n't need any tongue of the prophet 
to tell me whether he means business or not. I 
see that young fellow choosing the profession of law, 
and if, instead of poring over Blackstone and Green- 
leaf and all the law books, I see him now spending 
his evenings with the girls and loitering around the 
street, I don't need any tongue of the prophet to 
say that fellow will never get but one case and the 
sherifi* will get his client. 

I see a young fellow starting out to be a doctor. 
Let me watch him three months. I see him loiter- 
ing away his time and spending his evenings in 
parties, and paying no attention to physiology and 
anatomy and hygiene and so forth. I turn around 
and I can see what he will be. He will have 
but one patient, and the undertaker will get him 
next day, and that will wind up his practice. 

I see a preacher starting out who proposes to be 
a preacher ; he never looks in a book, never thinks, 
never studies; he is going to open his mouth and 



Godliness and Life. 223 

let the Lord fill it. Well, the Lord does fill a fel- 
low's mouth as soon as he opens it, but he fills it 
with air. I have listened to some men preaching 
an hour, and they didn't say one thing in the 
hour, and I got perfectly interested seeing how the 
fellow could dodge every idea in the universe and 
talk an hour. I just watched him. 

I see a farmer the first three months of the year 
who, instead of cleaning out his fence corners and 
repairing his fences and turning his land and being 
just as energetic and active in January as he is in 
May, is loitering around doing nothing. I do n't 
need any tongue of the prophet to tell how he'll 
come out farm.ing. I have seen him down South. 
I have watched him, and I have told him before he 
started in how he would come out, too. Said I: 
"I'll tell you what will happen to you. You'll 
buy your corn from the West; you put in forty 
acres to the old mule, and before the year is out 
the grass will have your cotton and the birds will 
have your wheat, and the buzzards will have your 
mule and the sheriff will have you, and that's 
about where you will wind up." 

But, on the other hand, when I see a young 
lawyer poring over his books day after day and 
night after night, burning the midnight oil, and I 
see the blood fading from his cheek, and his eye 
growing brighter every day, I do n't need the tongue 
of the prophet to tell me there will be one day a 
judge of the Supreme Court, that there will be one 
day one of the finest lawyers that America ever 
produced. And so on. 



224 Sermons and Sayinc^s. 

You let me watch a fellow the first three months 
after he joins the Church, I can tell you whether he 
means business or not. I see him begin to lay him- 
self out of his prayer-meetings and begin to neglect 
his duty, and begin to think that he has got more 
religion than he wants, and he'll run the rule of 
subtraction or division through it instead of the rule 
of addition, and I know just about where he '11 land. 
You are there now. When I see a man come into 
the Church of God Almighty and say : " I 'm going 
to take every chance for the good world ; I 'm going 
to get all the good out of every thing that comes 
my way or comes within a mile of me or ten miles 
of me," and I see him do his best and at his place 
and drawing in from all sources in heaven and 
earth, and see him as he begins to move forward 
in his Church and to be one of the pillars in 
Church — I do n't mean p-i-1-l-o-w-s ; you 've got a 
great many of that sort of pillars in your Churches 
in this town, good old cases for others to crawl in 
and lay their heads on and go to sleep ; that sort of 
pillows, downy fellows ! — I know he is "giving all 
diligence." 

I will tell you what surprises me sometimes. 
See old Brother A. go down Monday morning to do 
his business, and he puts all his blood and energy 
and money and muscles and tact into his business 
from Monday morning until Saturday night, and all 
the energies of soul and body are bent on pushing 
his business forward, and he is taking every turn, 
and using every means to do this ; and then he 
comes to his neglected Church on Sunday morning 



Godliness and Life. 225 

and takes his seat and sits there as quiet as the 
dead, and when the service is over he goes around 
into the study and says to the preacher, " What in 
the world ^s the matter with the Church? I can't 
see to save my life. She's not moving any." If 
that old fellow runs his business three months as he 
does the Church the sheriff would wind him up 
and settle him in bankruptcy. Talk about a man 
running his business as we do our Churches in this 
country ! Ah, me ! There is not a man in this 
house that does not know his business will go into 
bankruptcy and ruin if he devotes no more time to 
it than we devote to the Church of God. 

I'll tell you what I have got a contempt for in 
the highest sense — a fellow that is a first-class lawyer 
and a tenth-rate Methodist ; he is the best lawyer in 
town, but the worst member of his Church. Now, 
sir, that sort of a fellow is n't worth killing in any 
country in heaven or earth. I'll tell you another 
fellow that I have got a contempt for. It is this 
fellow: he is the best merchant in this city and he 
is about a fifteenth-rate Baptist. There is another 
fellow — the best doctor in this city, and as a Presby- 
terian he is the deadest failure in the town. Now, 
if a fellow is of no account anywhere, the Lord can 
sort of put up with his being of no account in the 
Church ; but if he is a first-class any thing out of the 
Church, God wants him to be a first-class every 
thing in the Church, do n 't you see ? 

Is n't it strange, brethren — now I do n't single 
out any class in this world and say aught against 
them — but is n 't it strange how few really pious law- 



226 Seemons and Sayings. 

yers we have in this country ? Is n't it strange? It 
takes less earnest effort to be a first-class Christian 
than it does to be a first-class lawyer, and I 'd rather 
be one first-class Christian than to be every first- 
class lawyer in the universe. 

You take the j)hysicians of the community. One 
of my old brethren, a physician once, belonged to 
my Church, and I got after him about not coming 
out, and he said that he tried his best to get there, 
but he could not. ^^ Well,'' said I, "I'll tell you, 
old fellow, if heaven was a sickly country, I do n 't 
believe I 'd want to go there." " Well," he said : 
" why ? " " Well, I am afraid there will be very 
few doctors there." I don't know what in the 
world's the matter, but there are so few doctors 
that are pious, but when you do find one that is 
thoroughly pious he is one of the best men on the 
face of the earth. 

What's the matter with our professional men? 
Have they grown too big to be religious? Have 
they grown up to where the Bible is considered 
their mother's and their little children's book? 
What is the matter? O, sir, listen to me to-night. 
The grandest lawyers this world ever produced 
were the men who loved and lived by this blessed 
book I am preaching from to-night. The best 
physicians and the grandest in the science in which 
they worked were men who read this book and 
loved this book, and when they came to die they 
said, "Wife, put the Bible under my head, and 
let it be my blessed pillow upon which I shall 
breathe my last." 



Godliness and Life. 227 

I do n't want any better evidence of the upstart 
than a fellow that gets too big to like the Bible ; 
and I declare to you that it has reached the point 
in this country now, if a fellow has much to say 
about the Bible and the faith of this book, they 
will ridicule him, they will say he is a fool that 
believes every thing — they will that. O, my breth- 
ren, when I see a Newton as he comes down from 
his observatory, just now numbering and count- 
ing the stars as he swept his telescope across the 
skies, I see him lay down his telescope and walk 
down into his closet, and kneel down and pray 
to God, and walk out and say to his wife, "Pre- 
cious wife, I got closer to God on my knees 
in the closet than I was just now in my ob- 
servatory, as I was counting and numbering the 
stars.'' The little fellow has too much sense to 
believe the Bible ! A big head in a man is a heap 
worse than it is in a horse. A horse will die in 
about a week, but the poor fellow lives on in the 
way of all the country — one of these knowing fel- 
lows. The Lord likes one of these fellows who 
says," I do n't know much ;" a man who drops down 
on his knees every morning when he first wakes up 
and says, "Lord God, go with me this day. I am 
poor and weak and miserable and ignorant and 
blind. O, Lord ! I would not risk myself out of 
this room and out of my yard to-day unless you go 
with me. Take my hand, precious Father, and 
lead me, because I know not the way." The Lord 
likes one of these men that feels in his heart, "I 
haven't got sense enough to go to my front gate 



228 Seemons and Sayings. 

and back unless the God of heaven will go with 
me." That is my sort. 

'^ Besides this giving all diligence^ add unto your 
faith, virtue." I like this rule of addition. I like 
it. I want more and more, and still there is more 
to follow. I want to be larger to-day, and better 
to-day, and grander to-day than yesterday. And 
the biggest reason in the world why I M rather live 
ten years longer in this life than to die to-morrow — 
the biggest reason after all — is the fact, that in the 
next ten years, if God lets me live, I intend to 
eliminate much that is evil about me, and I intend 
to grow and develop into a grander Christian man 
than I claim to be to-night. My highest wish for 
a longer period of life is that before the day of 
crystallization, God may eliminate from me all that 
is evil, and develop me into all that is good. 

" Add unto your faith, virtue ; and to virtue, 
knowledge ; and to knowledge, temperance ; and to 
temperance, patience " — enough to keep a man pious. 
You will find that evil here is broad and deep as you 
look out. "Add unto your faith, virtue." You take 
these seven graces before us to-night. Now, six 
thousand years ago God said " Let there be light, 
and there was light," but this world enjoyed its rays 
for thousands of years before any philosopher an- 
alyzed it and told us what pure, white light is. 
After a while the philosopher stepped to the front 
and he told us that pure, white, physical light is 
the symmetrical blending of the seven primary colors 
we find in the rainbow — red and blue and orange 
and green, etc. ; that the seven is pure white phys- 



Godliness and Life. 229 

ical light. Jesus Christ said to his Church : ^^ Ye 
are the light of the world.'' They did not under- 
stand him. But Peter studied the question and 
stepped forth as the great philosopher in spiritual 
things, and tells us that pure, white spiritual light 
is the symmetrical blending of the seven primary 
Christian graces — faith and courage and knowledge 
and temperance and patience and brotherly kindness 
and charity. The seven graces will shed forth a 
light that will, indeed, light the whole world. 

Now, brother, let us change the figure a moment 
and look at it in this way : we are building for 
eternity. Every man ought to look well to the 
foundation. Jesus Christ is the great foundation 
upon which we rest all our hope and all our ex- 
perience and all our patience for time and eternity. 
Christ is the great bed-rock, and faith in him as we 
build this spiritual temple, faith in Christ, is the 
first rock put down. And we build this temple 
without the sound of a hammer. We build this 
temple out of divine material and according to 
divine direction, and the first rock I put down — the 
bed-rock — is faith ; for " without faith it is impos- 
sible to please God.'' ^^ He that believeth shall be 
saved." I may say that my heart rests upon this 
old book ; I may say that I believe this book ; I 
may say that I inherited a faith from my father and 
mother in this blessed book ; I may say that there 
is not a single utterance of God that I doubt in my 
heart to-night. Call me a dupe and call me a fool, 
but tell others, when you say I am a dupe and a 
fool, tell them I am a happy one. 



230 Sermons and Sayings. 

Faith in my Bible ? I believe this book ; I be- 
lieve this book, and this book has blessed thousands 
of men before I was born, and the best men on 
whom I lean every day, whisper back in my ear: 
" That blessed book is a lamp to my feet and a light 
unto my path." This blessed book, that never mis- 
led a human step and never misdirected a human 
life ; this book, with its morals so pure and with its 
Christ so ennobling and elevating to the race — I 
believe, I believe ! 

I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker 
of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only 
begotten son, our Lord ; I believe in the Holy 
Ghost ; in the Church of God. I believe — I be- 
lieve there is power in God and virtue in the blood 
of Christ and truth in the Holy Ghost ; and, breth- 
ren, if I did n't believe that book, and believe God 
is its author, and God is with me, I'd close this 
book and close my mouth and leave this town on 
the first train that left for my home. I believe my 
Bible ; and when the Christian people of this town 
believe this book, we are going to take this book 
and conquer the whole city. I believe, I believe in 
God, as he is the Father of all men, preserver of 
all life, inspirer of all that is good. 

I believe in God, and now to this faith in God 
and faith in the right, what is the next rock we 
lay down ? See how this will fit : "Add unto 
your faith, virtue" — virtus, courage. Now, do n't 
you see that if a man believes he is right the very 
next thing he wants is a courage that dares to do 
right and dares to be true, I want to say at this 



Godliness and Life. 231 

point that I am not talking about physical courage. 
I am afraid that Christian people are sometimes 
physical cowards. I do not want a man to be a 
physical coward, but above all things deliver me 
from a moral coward. I want to tell you that I 
have searched this book from Genesis to Revela- 
tion, and I find that God never did choose a man 
to do a great work for him but that that man was 
game from head to foot. God despises a coward. 

Moral courage ! Physical courage is not much. 
Physical courage will march me right up into 
the blazing mouth of a cannon without shaking a 
muscle in my body, but that is not much. I have 
known generals and colonels and majors and cap- 
tains and privates in this last war that never had a 
muscle quiver in front of a cannon. Yet these same 
men after coming home from the war would quake 
and wince and whine in the presence of public 
opinion. Afraid of that ! Afraid of that ! And I 
will tell you another thing for which a fellow needs 
courage. There are a great many things in this 
world that stand looking a fellow in the face and 
shal^e their fist at him, and if he has n 't got the grit 
he will run, no doubt about it. And I say to-night 
every man that walks out before this world and 
would make it purer and better, that man shall, 
like his Lord, have his Gethsemane, and his Pilate's 
bar, and his Judas Iscariot and his Simon Peter 
and his cross. 

I tell you another thing. I would rather face 
every cannon in America to-night, as far as I am 
personally concerned, than face the opinion of the 



232 Seemons and Sayings. 

elite society of this city. What a hollow, miserable, 
heartless, godless old wretch that society is ! Why, 
you can get on the street cars of this town, so I have 
been told, that are filled with theater-going, dancing, 
godless members of the Church, and Sam Jones is 
their text from the time you step on until you step 
off. Some say he is a brute. Some say he is as 
ignorant as a Southern plantation darky. Some 
say he is a vicious man. Some say one thing, and 
some another thing, and they shell the woods for a 
fellow. It is like the barking of a " fise ^^ dog after 
a fast train — you can see the little fellow run, but 
you can not hear him bark. 

Right is right, and stand to it; and when the 
last storm of passion has swept over, God is with you. 
That is more than can be against you, and that is 
all that you need. You attack the ball-rooms in 
this town, and every dancing, worldly member of the 
Church, and every sinner, too, turns his guns right 
loose upon you. 

And I will tell you another thing. I want to 
say this to encourage you good Christian brethren 
that need just a little more backbone. When they tell 
you Jones is low-bred, do n't you believe them, for 
it is a lie ! When they tell you that Jones is 
ignorant, you tell them that won't do ; that Jones 
will go into a class with any of them to-morrow, 
and let a professor examine them on any subject. 
What do you say to that? And when they tell you 
that Jones came from bad stock, you tell them that 
a purer, nobler woman God never made than my 
mother, and that a better, purer man God never let 



Godliness and Life. 233 

live than my precious father. I am from as good 
a stock as God ever made. 

I want to tell you right now that I never was 
in society. I reckon that one reason for this is 
that I have been poor all my life, and they would 
have objected to me on that account. They would 
never have let me in, anyhow. They would have 
known that I would tell on them, and they do n't 
want any tales told out of school ; I have found 
that out. But I did not mean to say any thing 
about society now. We shall take that up later. 
We will shake it, till it is ready to be turned loose 
when we get through with it. 

There are things in your city day after day and 
night after night that are enough to make a thou- 
sand mothers and fathers in this town call a halt, 
and say : ^^ You had better stop right here. This 
thing has gone far enough.'^ I tell you, mothers 
and fathers, if you will open your eyes and look 
around you a little you will call : "Halt! halt ! halt! 
I will shoot you down if you take another step.'' 
And I know when a man begins to talk about these 
things I know how little Miss Finnicky and old 
Brother Finnicky and the whole devil's crowd will 
sit upon him. I have been around before. 

Courage ! courage ! Jesus Christ, the great ex- 
emplar in Christianity, preached his own Gospel, 
and when he did, do you recollect that on one oc- 
casion a vast multitude turned their backs on him 
and walked off in disgust ; and Jesus turned to his 
disciples and said : " Will ye also go away ?" And 
Simon Peter said : " Lord, to whom shall we go ? 

20 



234 Sermons and Sayings. 

For thou hast the words of eternal life/^ I do not 
believe I ever preached the Gospel as plainly as my 
Master preached it, for I have never had a congre- 
gation to "rush out" on me, and if ever I preach 
to a congregation and see the people jump up and 
run out of the house, I will jump up, too, and hol- 
ler, " Glory to God ! I am preaching like my Mas- 
ter now.'^ But that would not be any joke on me. 
Everywhere I have ever worked, God bless you, 
they would say you people in the city were so mean 
you would not hear Sam Jones. They would brag 
on me and curse you. That is about the way the 
thing would go. 

Courage that dares to be right and dares to be 
true ! If a thing is wrong, fight it fight it ! If it 
is right, stand up for it if every man on earth is 
against you. Stand and fight and fight and fight, and 
though you go down and think you are alone, I tell you 
that when the din and smoke of the battle has 
blown away and you open your eyes, you will find 
God and the angels and good men standing 
around you. 

Courage, brother ! Now what does this mean ? 
One time Peter's courage failed him, and of all the 
times in the world it was the time that Peter's 
courage ought to have held good. Yonder his 
Lord, defenseless and alone, given over to his en- 
emies, stood before that cruel crowd, and they spat 
upon him and buffeted him and plaited a crown of 
thorns and pressed it on his temple until the 
blood ran down his cheeks. And Peter stood there 
looking at it, no doubt, until his very blood boiled. 



Godliness and Life. 235 

And there was the Son of God and the Son of Man, 
without a friend in the world he came to redeem. 
There Peter stood out in the distance, and when 
the fatal moment came the people approached him 
and said : " You are one of his disciples ; ^^ and 
Peter answered : " No, I am not one of his disci- 
ples.'' And then again they approached him and 
said : " You are one of his disciples." He said : 
'' No, I am not one of his disciples." And, again, 
a little girl approached him and said : "You are 
one of his disciples;" and Peter cursed and swore 
with an oath, and said : "I do not know him." 
Brother, I do not object to the way God's Word is 
written, but I have wished a thousand times that 
when my Master stood there, without a friend in 
the world, and they approached Peter, I have 
wished that Peter had rushed up by the Son of God 
and said : " I AM one of his disciples, and I will 
DIE by his side." If he had done that I believe 
that God would have rushed every angel in heaven 
down to Peter's side before he would have suffered 
a hair of his head to be touched. And we 
have forsaken our Master when he did not have a 
friend in the world. 

Courage ! Courage ! I tell you, this sickly senti- 
mentalism that we have that God's people are a peace- 
ful, quiet, and get-out-the-devil's-way sort of people 
is a mistake. Down in my State I have been preach- 
ing prohibition, and in Georgia I have gone into 
those counties where prohibition was being fought 
the hardest, and said : " Brethren of the Church, 
take a stand and hold it. Do not let a barkeeper, 



236 Sermons and Sayings. 

that has not got more than three gallons of whisky, 
and that bought on credit, come out on the square 
on election day with an old, rusty pistol in his hand 
that has n't been loaded since the war, and curse 
two or three times, and talk loud and run every 
member of the Church out of town. God have 
mercy on you pusillanimous wretches," said I. 
" Hold your ground, and tell them that if they can 
die for their infernal traffic you can die for your 
precious children." And I said, ^^ Go on, and God's 
approval will rest with you." 

There was a day when one of God's armies 
was battling with the enemies of God. Joshua, the 
commander, was fighting with all the ransomed 
powers at his back, and the enemy was being beaten 
down in front of the ranks of God's hosts. But 
Joshua looked up, and saw that the sun was going 
down, and he looked up and said: "O God, if you 
will give me two or three hours more sunshine I '11 
put this army to flight and will win a victory that 
shall make thine armies famous forever." And God 
turned and told the sun to go back on the dial, and 
" do n't you move an inch until Joshua routs this 
army root and branch and sweeps it almost from 
the face of the earth." And I tell you God will 
make the sun stand still in the heavens and the 
moon not move in the Valley of Ajalon, if God's 
people ever have the courage to stand up and dare 
to be right and dare to be true. 



Skrmon XII 



THK WAGKS OK SIIST. 



" The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal 
life, through Jesus Christ, our Lord." — Kom. vi, 23. 

THEKE are two questions which always come up 
legitimately and inevitably between employer 
and employe, between a hireling and his master. If 
you seek to employ a man for a day, or a week, or 
a month, or a year, the first question he inevitably 
puts to you is this : " What kind of work do you 
want me to do?'^ And when this question is satis- 
factorily answered there is another, inevitable and 
legitimate, and that is, ^^ What will you pay me for 
it ? " These two questions are the very basis of all 
contracts for labor. There can be no intelligent 
contract for labor to be rendered you without the 
settling of these two questions. What do you want 
me to do ? and what will you pay me for it ? 

There may be a great many persons here to- 
night who boast of the fact that they were never in 
the employment of any body, or never sustained the 
relation of a servant or a hireling in their lives. 
There is a very important sense in which we are 
all doing service and in which we are serving a 
master, though you may boast of constitutional lib- 
erty, and that you live in the freest country in the 
world, whose constitution guarantees to every man 
his life and liberty and property ; and yet there is a 
fearful sense in which all men are servants and all 

237 



238 Sermons and Sayings. 

men are at work for a master, and there is a very 
important sense in which pay-day is coming. 

Whose servant am I? Our Savior taught us 
no man could serve two masters: he would either 
hold to the one and despise the other, or hate the 
one and love the other. He taught us again, To 
whom you yield service obey him willingly. A 
great many people say, When you bring me into the 
moral world I serve no master at all; and if this 
world is cursed with any class it is the man Avho 
says he is neither good nor bad! You ask him, ^'Are 
you a good man ? " and he will say, " No, sir ; '^ and 
if you ask him, ^^ Are you a bad man,^^ he will say, 
" No, sir.'^ Neither good nor bad ! If there is a 
being in the world I have a contempt for it is a 
character of this sort. 

There are a great many of that class in this 
world too — a so-called class. ^^ I am neither good 
nor bad.'^ I ain't good enough to go to heaven, 
may be, but I ain't bad enough to go to hell — yes, 
and I reckon you '11 force a moral issue on this uni- 
verse, and claim that God made a third world to 
put you in when you die; neither good nor bad. 
La, me ; how many men in this world sustain that 
relation toward the truth and the judgment of God. 

Hear me on this question. Our Savior said : 
" He that is not with me is against me. He that 
gathereth not with me, scattereth abroad," and the 
lines are so sharply and so clearly drawn, that no 
man can stand squarely on a line between the good 
and the evil, between the right and the wrong, 
heaven's best interests and hell, with its demoraliz- 



The Wages of Sin. 239 

ing influence. I say every man of us is either on 
the one side or the other side of this line, and any 
man that is n't good enough to go to heaven is going 
to hell. That 's all you can make out of it. Neither 
good nor bad ! There are two classes in all com- 
munities that puzzle the balance of humanity. 
Here 's one man in the Church — we '11 say a clever, 
moral, decent sort of a man; he belongs to the 
Church, and he '11 pray when called upon, and he 
seems to make a good steward, but he doesn't pay 
his debts, and doesn't act right toward his neigh- 
bors. Here 's a man that does n't belong to the 
Church — he will stand out there, and he pays all 
his debts, and he 's liberal to the poor, but he does n't 
belong to the Church. There stands the Church 
member and here stands the other fellow — the Church 
member won't pay his debts and won't do right by 
his neighbor, but he seems to be trying to do his 
duty towards God and not to man. The other is 
doing his duty to his fellow-men, but he is n't act- 
ing right towards God. 

There 's another fellow says ; " I 'd a heap rather 
be the man out of the Church that pays his debts 
and acts right to his fellow-men than the one in the 
Church that won't pay his debts and do right with 
his neighbors, but acts square to God. I 'd a heap 
rather be this one." Brother, why do you want to 
be a fool by being either one of them ? I do n't, 
and I not only do n't want to be either one of them, 
but I won't be either of them. I 'm going into the 
kingdom of Christ, and intend to do my whole duty 
to God and to my fellow-men ; and now when you 



240 Seemons and Sayings. 

see a man do this you see a whole man — not one of 
these little half-and-half fellows ; one trying to do 
what the Lord tells him to do and being mean 
toward his neighbor, and the other doing right by 
his neighbor but being wrong with the Lord. I 
do n't think there 's much good about either, but I 'd 
a heap sight rather be the fellow in the Church, 
for if I 'm going to mistreat any body it is n't going 
to be God — he's the best friend I've got. Listen 
to me. My first duty is toward God, and I will do 
right towards him ; and my next duty is to my fel- 
low-men, and I will do right towards them ; and 
then when I do this I'm made up for both worlds. 

" He that is not with me is against me. He 
that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." A 
man must take sides on the great moral issues of 
the world, and he must take sides with one or the 
other of the two great contending forces. A man 
must be with God or he is with the devil in all his 
Avalks and ways. I grant you, it looks sometimes 
as if a man is dividing up the thing. A man is 
trying to serve two masters. It reminds me of a 
Union man during the late war, and he had more 
loyalty than any body. He sent every boy he had 
to the war, but he was running a powder mill on 
the Confederate side, furnishing powder to the rebels. 
What do you think of such a man ? He loves the 
Union well enough to give his boys to die for the 
Union, but he says : " If I can make a little money 
by furnishing powder to the rebels, all right." 

Many a man in this country loves a dollar bet- 
ter than he does his children. Put that down. I '11 



The Wages of Sin. 241 

tell you another thiqg. Many a man says he loves 
the Church, and he will put all his children into 
the Church, and he 's renting a bar-room to a fellow 
who sells whisky and demoralizes the town — rent- 
ing, perhaps, even worse places than that — a soldier 
of Christ running a powder mill over the line and 
furnishing ammunition to the devil. I can take a 
handful of copper cents and tole a fellow like that 
to hell and eternal fire by just dropping the cop- 
pers along about every foot or two, right up to 
the fires. I can that. Better the man that gets 
down off the fence, and takes one side or the other. 
I like that. 

In our State, in the prohibition fight, we had 
Prohibitionists that were Prohibitionists from the 
crown of their hat to the toe of their boot, and we 
had anti-Prohibitionists all over anti, but then we 
had a great many people that said they were not 
going to take any stock in it — going to vote one 
way or the other. The old fools, they belonged 
to the devil, from the tip of their head to the end 
of the heels. '^ Is n't going to take any sides at 
all!" and the fellow is the sneakingest hound dog 
in creation. He is that. What is he good for? 
I '11 tell you what's the matter. He 's afraid if he 
makes a move one way or the other some fellow will 
crack his head. That's what's the matter with 
him, and the day of election he won't go down town 
at all. His wife says to him : " Husband, why 
do n't you get up and vote this awful stuff out of 
the community ?" And he says : " I ain 't well ; 
I'm afraid if I go out I'll get in a fuss; I don't 

21 



242 Sermons and Sayings. 

want to be mixed up with fusses.'^ You old, little 
pusillanimous coward, you — that's what you are. 

Let's come out on one side or the other on all 
moral questions. If I 'm for a thing, I 'm for it. 
If I 'm against a thing, I 'm against it with all my 
might, and you can 't wake me up on any question 
any minute in the day, and find me on both sides 
of the fence, or a-straddle of the fence, for I love to 
see a man a man all over, and a man of conviction. 
I do that. If Fm on the right side, I 'm there to 
stay; and if I'm on the wrong side, I'll come over 
as soon as you show me I 'm wrong. 

Brethren, we may settle this question here to- 
night, in five minutes. "Whose side am I on?" 
We must settle it. A tree is known by its fruit. 
A salty fountain can 't send forth pure water. Sam 
Small never told a bigger truth than Avhen he said 
the other day, "If I wanted to raise a mob in this 
town to do unrighteous things, to fight God and 
truth and right, I'd beat the long roll in every 
saloon in this town, and I'd muster in the fumes 
of lager beer and whisky the worst element hell 
itself could generate and get up." Is n't that so ? 
I used to think these whisky fellows were the clev- 
erest fellows in the world, but when I was done with 
them, and began to throw some shot in among 
them, ray, my, I threw some shot into the dirtiest, 
stinkingest places man's eyes ever looked into. 
You can always tell what a thing is when you be- 
gin to fire into it ; you can see the fumes of it in 
the atmosphere when you're firing. 

A heap of the people in this town, that stand 



The Wages of Sm. 243 

back and won't take one side or the other, are 
allied with the worst influence of earth. That's 
so. I recollect when the proposition was made at a 
temperance meeting once, and when the time came 
for the signing of the pledge of total abstinence, a 
good pastor of the city said : ^^ I ain't ready to sign 
the pledge. I'm a good temperance man, but I'm 
not a teetotaler. I believe a little occasionally will 
help me. I'm as much down on drunkenness as 
any body, but I want it understood I believe in tem- 
perance, though not in prohibition." About that 
time a fellow sitting away over in the corner stag- 
gered to his feet and said, with a drunken leer on 
his face, and with fumes of whisky on his breath, 
" Mr, Presiden', that preacher (hie) just 'spresses 
(hie) my sen'ments 'xacly (hie)." The preacher 
jumped up and said: "Well, if that's the kind of 
fellows I've got to go with, you can put me down 
on the side of teetotalism forever." 

When you begin to dilly-dally and waver about 
religion, let me tell you, brethren, the devil puts you 
down soul and body on his side. That's a fact. 
I 've often thought of the story told of that poor 
girl over yonder at the dance. During the dance 
she dropped dead on the floor, and the story goes 
on to say that the devil came immediately and car- 
ried oflf her soul, but in a few minutes St. Peter 
came running up and said : " Where 's the soul of 
that girl gone?" and somebody said: "The devil 
has just come and taken it ofl"." St. Peter rushed 
after the devil in double-quick time and overtook 
him. He said: "Hold on, sir." "What's the 



244 Seemons and Sayings. 

matter?" said the devil. " You \^e got a member of 
the Church's soul there, carrying it off. You have 
no right to that, sir.'' " Well/' said the devil, 
" you can take it away if you want to, but she died 
in my territory." 

As men live, so they die, and if you can 't afford 
to die on the devil 's side, let me say to you you 'd 
better not go over there at all. You 'd better not. 
If non-members of the Church want to play cards and 
dance and drink whisky, we have no right to enter 
protest ; but I'll tell you whenever I find members 
of the Church, who have sworn allegiance to Christ 
playing cards and drinking whisky and going to 
theaters, I'm going to look them in the face and 
holler out, '^Traitor!" ^^ Traitor !" ^^ Traitor !" 
That's what you are — a traitor. Brethren, that's 
pretty strong, but when you go home if you'll pick 
me out any thing stronger I'll use it also. I 
have n't any compromise to make. Many a one in 
this town is kicking hard right now, too. They say 
" Why it 's outrageous the way that man goes on 
talking about the Church. It's ridiculous, and it 
ought n't to be permitted at all." 

I tell you only a hit dog will run and howl 
every crack. There's no law against it. If they 
ain 't hit, I want them to hush. I got some letters 
to-day that made me feel sad in my soul. I've a 
good mind to pull some of them out and read them. 
It's enough to make an angel shudder, just to think 
what members of the Church in this city are guilty 
of day after day and year after year. It is that. 

Let's take sides, brethren. Let's come over on 



The Wages of Sin. 245 

God's side all over and forever, or let 's quit it alto- 
gether and go on the devil's side. In one of the 
towns in Georgia a member of the Church — a 
different Church from mine — said to me, " Jones, I 
want to ask you a question. What harm is there in 
card-playing ? '^ "Do you play cards?'' asked I. 
" Yes/' said he. " You 're a deacon in your Church?" 
"Yes," said he; "and if you will convince me 
there 's any harm in this thing, I '11 quit it forever." 
Said I, " You 're already convinced of one thing, 
ain 't you ? " " Why, what 's that ? " said he. " That 
you ain't worth the powder and lead to kill you 
out of the Church?" "Yes, that's so," said the 
fellow. 

" Well, then," I said, " I have n't got any time to 
fool away with such fellows as you. If you were 
any good I 'd stand here an hour, but you 've con- 
fessed you ain 't worth the powder and lead to kill 
you, and I haven't any powder to waste on such as 
you." 

Is there a man here that prays every day and 
goes to prayer-meeting regularly, and pays his 
quarterage like a liberal man, and gives liberally to 
foreign missions — is there one like that that goes to 
the theater, and dances, and plays cards and drinks 
whisky? If there is, stand up. If you are what 
God says you ought to be, and still you do these 
things, stand up, and I'll apologize for what I said 
against you. I never will apologize to any of the 
uncircumcised Philistines — I never will. If you 
live right and do your duty, and I Avound your feel- 
ings, I'll beg your pardon, but if you're living the 



246 Seemons and Sayings. 

life of a hypocrite in the Churchy I will not apolo- 
gize for preaching the truth to you. 

One side or the other; for or against; serving 
God or serving the devil, one or the other — that^s 
the text. Are you a servant of the devil ? " To 
whom you yield yourself for service, obey his serv- 
ice." Listen. "Keep my Commandments." Do 
you do that? No? Well, then you are not a serv- 
ant of the Lord. "Deny yourself; take up your 
cross and follow me." Do you do that ? No ? Then 
you are not a servant of the Lord. If a man is n't 
a servant of the Lord then he 's a servant of the 
devil. 

Let's drop back on the first proposition. Go to 
your master to-night, the devil; ask him what kind 
of work he wants you to do. He wants you to 
profane God's name, he wants you to belie the Sab- 
bath, he wants you to debauch your soul with 
whisky, for it is said : " No drunkard shall enter 
the kingdom of heaven." Is that the sort of work 
he wants you to do? Yes, it is. Not only does 
he want you to do that sort of work, but there are 
a hundred of you here that can say : " That 's the 
sort of work he sets out for me year after year. 
He wants me to do those things that will degrade 
me in my own eyes, in the eyes of God, in the eyes of 
men, in the eyes of my family. He wants me to do 
every thing that 's disreputable and that will doom 
me forever in the future." Isn't that so? How 
many men here to-night can testify : " That 's the 
truth in my case ?" 

If this is the sort of dirty, disreputable work the 



The Wages of Sin. 247 

devil wants you to do, you ask the question, " What 
does he pay for it ? What are the wages V^ You 
ask yourself this question, for may be pay-day will 
come on you before 12 o'clock to-night, when the 
laborer is worthy of his hire, and your wages will 
be counted to you to the last cent. Brethren, it is 
well enough to stop and ask yourself this question, 
for none of us know how close pay-day is at hand. 
Old fellow, you want to settle this question, ^' What 
are the wages for the life of servile bondage in the 
service of the devil f^ I asked an old fellow this 
question one day, and happening to meet him the 
day after, he said: "If I had stood up and told 
those people what my wages have been for my ser- 
vice to the devil in the past sixty-five years, it would 
have frightened them. All I Ve got to show is the 
worst family in Georgia, and a knowledge of the 
fact that neither myself nor my family will be saved. 
That 's all I can show for sixty-five years' service 
to the devil." 

Brethren, stop here to-night and ask. What are 
my wages? The wages of sin is death, damnation 
and degradation. You ask, is that so? I can dig 
out of your cemeteries in Cincinnati, O how 
many, who are fit representatives of the eternal truth 
I am talking of right now. What are your wages? 
Pay-day is coming. Suppose, we will say, I am a 
servant of the Lord ; suppose I serve him and make 
him the delight of my soul and my heart. I won- 
der what he wants me to do? He wants me to do 
those things that will make every body think more 
of me and make angels think more of me. He 



248 Sermons and Sayings. 

wanty me to do those things that will elevate me 
in time and make me fit and meet for heaven here- 
after. In this delightful service of the Lord you 
must keep the commandments^ and when you can 
do that then you can say, ^^O Lord, I can enter 
such service as that for nothing.'^ You won't want 
any wages for doing that. You will gladly go and 
serve him forever. What does he pay ? Cash enough 
to live on every day; and when you get old and 
wrinkled and gray-headed, and can not work any 
longer, he stoops down and picks you up and gives 
you a house in heaven to live in with him and 
angels forever. If these things are true, brethren, 
can you tell me how it is that the devil has a serv- 
ant in the world? I'll tell you how he got you, 
and how he is keeping you, and the Lord help you 
to-night to break these chains and walk forth a free 
man from this time on. 

Brethren, let's take one side or the other of 
these questions. You can 't be on the fence and 
be saved. You must come over to one side or the 
other. 

I can never forget the hours in my life when I 
turned this world loose and had no God to take my 
hand. O brother, for nearly a week I was wading 
and wading through the deepest trials. I had turned 
loose all my sins, and I could not find the hand of 
God. I was reaching up, saying, " Father, take my 
hand ! take my hand !" And on I went. I felt like 
the veriest orphan in all the universe of God, and 
miserably I pressed my way along, the most miser- 
able man in the world. Thank God for those awful 



The Wages of Sin. 249 

hours ! They have been so awful to me that my 
footsteps shall never go back over that road. Gocl, 
let me die before I shall ever cross that weary quag- 
mire again in my human experience, poor and 
wretched and miserable! This was the first cup 
presented to my lips — the cup of repentance. I 
drank it down; and O, what anguish and misery 
of soul I felt. The next cup God presented was the 
cup of justification, and as I drank it I said, " Well, 
surely, God has kept the good wine until now.'' 
O, none out of God can know how glorious the sin- 
ner feels when he hears the voice of God saying: 
" Son, daughter, thy sins, which are many, are ail 
forgiven ! " 

The first cup God presented to St. Paul, he was 
stricken down in the road and struck stone blind. 
For three days and nights he groped his way in 
darkness until he reached the house of Judas, and 
when Ananias laid his hands upon him and the 
scales fell from his eyes and joy came into his soul, 
I suppose St. Paul thought, " Well, God has kept 
the good wine until now.'' And a few months after 
that St. Paul was caught up into the third heaven and 
poised himself over the city of God, and looked down 
on the towering spires and jasper walls and pearly 
gates, and his ears were charmed with the songs of 
angels and the music of the redeemed. I suppose 
as he looked down on that city of God that he said : 
" Well, verily God has kept the good wine until 
now." But by and by in his lonely prison at Pome 
God presented another cup, and St. Paul took his 
pen again and wrote to Timothy : "The time of 



250 Sermons and Sayings. 

ray departure is at hand.^^ He just took that great 
clod of a word which, we call " death ^^ and threw it on 
one side, and he said : " The time of my departure 
is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have 
finished my course, I have kept the faith/^ If we 
had St. Paul down here to-night to conclude this 
service, and he would just tell us what good things 
God has in store for us, we would all leave here 
shouting the praises of God for the glorious hope of 
an immortal life beyond the skies. 

I have thought of many things in reference to 
eternity. I have thought this way : I have lain down 
and dreamed of heaven, and I have stood up and 
thought of heaven, and I have sat down and read 
of heaven, and then I have sung of heaven, and on 
I go; but, brethren, all the money I have got in 
the universe is in this bank, and if it does n^t break 
I am a millionaire. I have felt it many a time. 
All my calculations and all my interest is in that 
direction, and if at the final day God should say to 
me : " Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting flames,^' I 
will turn my back and walk away from the gates 
of heaven the worst disappointed man that God 
ever drove away from his presence. No, sir. My 
calculations are all that way. And then after awhile, 
if I do succeed and step inside of the pearly gates and 
turn around and see God and angels, and precious 
mother and father and loved ones, brethren, I will 
just bury my face in my hands and say, " Sure enough, 
beyond all doubt or cavil, I am here, I am here.'^ 
And blessed be God, I just as fully expect to realize 
that I am in heaven as I realize to-night I am here, 



The AYages of Sin. 251 

in fact more so. I may be mistaken about being 
in this city, it may be somewhere else; but when I 
get to heaven, there is no place in the world like 
heaven, and I will know I am there, sure enough. 
Well, now I know what a servant of God will 
do for other folks, and we are all alike. I have 
been watching some things mighty close during the 
last few years. I w^as pastor of a Church, and in 
that Church there was one of the most faithful godly 
women I ever saw in my life. Her husband was 
wealthy and she gave with a princely hand to the 
poor and to every good cause, and it was joy to her 
heart to do for the Master. And finally her time 
came to pass out of this world. I visited her in her 
last illness. She was dying of consumption, and 
had spent several Winters in Florida. When I 
would go into her room and talk to her she would 
frequently say, ^^ I dread to die ; not the result of 
death/^ she said, ^' but the agonies of death." And 
I talked to her and encouraged her all I could. She 
said, ^^I am so frail, I am so weak I can scarcely 
lift my hands, and, O! how can I grapple with 
physical death?'' The last time I visited her be- 
fore she died she motioned to the company present 
to leave the room — I suppose she did, for they all 
got up and walked out at once and left me alone 
with her. Then she said : " My pastor, I have some 
things of importance to say to you that I never 
want you to mention while I live, for the world 
makes light of such things, and what I say to you 
is as sacred to me as my own soul." She said, 
"You know I told you when you ^vere here last 



252 Seemons and Sayings. 

that I was afraid of the agonies of death ; not of 
what is beyond/^ "Yes, ma^am/^ I replied. 
"Well," she says, "I am not now." "Why," said 
I, "what brought about the change?" She said, 
" Yesterday I was lying in my room here and I put 
my handkerchief over my face and I was thinking 
of heaven, and, all at once a scene just as natural 
as life presented itself. It seemed that I stood upon 
the moss-covered banks of a beautiful river and the 
noiseless water was rolling gently by. All at once 
a little boat ran its prow out right at my feet, and 
the oarsman invited me into the boat. I stepped 
into the little boat and it moved off so noiselessly, 
and we disembarked on the other bank amid the 
shouts of the angels and the songs of the redeemed, 
and they carried me up a beautiful avenue to a 
palace, and we walked up to the door of the palace 
and the door stood ajar. They carried me into the 
palace, and I felt like a stranger in a strange place. 
They carried me up to the King and introduced 
me to him, and as soon as my eyes fell upon him I 
saw and recognized immediately that it was the 
world's Redeemer, my precious Savior, and I was at 
home from that time on. Now," she said, " I am 
not afraid to die." 

Just a few days afterwards, as her husband sat 
with her, she called him in a whisper. He went to her. 
She said : " Husband, I feel so delightfully strange ; 
what do you think is the matter with me?" He 
felt her hand and felt her arm to her body, and it 
was cold. " O, precious wife," he said, " you are 
dying." She raised her arms and clasped them 



The Wages of Sin. 253 

round his neck, and said : " O, husband, if this is 
death, what a glorious thing it is to die." And she 
fell back upon her pillow and never breathed 
again. 

Just eleven days after that I was walking along 
by the hotel, and the husband of this good woman 
said: ^' Mr. Jones, my little Annie is very sick. I 
wish you would come and see her." She was the 
only child of that man and the good sister that had 
died. As I walked into the room, there was little 
Annie, little ten-year-old Annie, sick with diph- 
theria. I walked in and took her hand and said : 
'^ Sweet darling, are you suffering much ?" She 
said in a whisper: " Yes, sir ; a good deal." I said : 
" Darling, do you want me to talk to you ?" And 
she said: "Yes, sir; if you please." "What 
about?" I asked. She said : " I want you to talk 
to me about heaven." I said : " Well, darling, it is 
a great country, a glorious place, where little girls 
never suffer, and mamma is never sick, and where 
all is life and health and peace." And her little 
eyes fairly shone like diamonds in her head while I 
talked. And directly the doctors walked in and her 
father said : " Annie, darling, the doctors want to 
cauterize, to burn your throat again." She looked 
up so pleadingly and said: "Papa, please sir, 
don't let them burn my throat any more. Mamma 
has been calling me all the morning, and I want to 
go." "Why," he said, "sweet darling, if you go 
papa won^t have any little girl. Won't you stay 
with papa?" "Well," she said, "they may burn 
my throat, but it won't do any good. I am going 



254 Seemons and Sayings. 

to mamma.'^ They burned her throat, and she lay 
perfectly quiet a minute or two. Then she was vis- 
ited by some Sunday-school children, and she 
turned and said: ''Won^t you sing ^' Shall We 
Gather at the Eiver?'' And she said: "I have 
heard them singing it over there, and mamma is 
joining in.^^ The little children began to sing, and 
just as they commenced the chorus, the sweet spirit 
of little Annie left the body with a placid, heavenly 
smile on its face, and went home to live with her 
mamma forever. No wonder the old prophet said : 
^^Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my 
last end be like his." ^^ Mark the perfect man 
and behold the upright, for the end of that man is 
peace." 

Peace ! Peace ! Now another incident and then 
I will quit, just to show you the difference ; a 
simple contrast. I want you to see it. During the 
last cruel war — and how cruel it was — a ministei 
in our State was summoned to Virginia by a tele- 
gram, which read: "Your brother is mortally 
wounded. Hurry to the front." This ministei 
hurried to the front as fast as the trains could carry 
him to the battlefields of Virginia. When he 
reached Virginia he found his brother was wounded 
sure enough fatally. He was in a country home, 
and he made haste to the place, and when he walked 
into the room where his suffering brother was lying 
he went up to the bed and took his hand. He saw 
immediately that death was doing its work, and he 
said : " Brother, I am so glad to get here before 
you die. Brother, I am so anxious about your soul. 



The Wages of Sin. 255 

You have been a wicked man all your life ; I have 
prayed for you, and talked with you many a time. 
Now, brother, brother, will you right here surrender 
your heart to God?^' ^^O,'^ said the wounded 
man, " do not talk to me about my soul. I have 
thrown away all my health and vigorous days and 
despised God and religion, and now I can do nothing 
with every fiber of my body burning and aching. 
O, brother, I can not talk with you now about re- 
ligion." The next day the brother tried his best 
to approach him again, but the wounded brother 
waved him off, and said : " Brother, I am tortured 
to death with physical pain. Please, do not trouble 
me now. I am unprepared and shall die unpre- 
pared, but do not torture me more than I am being 
tortured." He could not approach him. 

It was the sixth night this preacher brother 
had sat by his brother's bedside. Loss of sleep and 
exhaustion and anxiety had reduced him so much 
and worried him so, that, as the wounded brother 
was lying quietly that night about twelve o'clock, 
he said to himself, " I will lie down on the cot and 
rest for a few moments. I won't go to sleep. I 
see brother is very low." And he said, "I lay 
down on the cot and, in a moment almost, was sound 
asleep." And while asleep he dreamed that his 
brother died with his mouth wide open, and just as 
soon as the soul left the body he saw the devil 
come in in bodily form and approach the bed, and 
walk up to his dead brother, and look down 
into his brother's mouth, and he saw that the 
soul was gone. And he said : " I thought that 



256 Seemons and Sayings. 

when the soul of my brother left his body it hid 
among the piles of wood I had piled up by the 
fire to keep the fire going, and the devil scented 
the soul, and started around to my brother's hid- 
den soul, and as the devil approached that hiding 
place the soul flew out of the room, crying 'Lost! 
X/ost ! Lost ! Forever lost !' And," said he, " in the 
distance I heard the wail of my brother's soul as 
it hurried out of the reach of the devil, and in the 
distance I could hear the shrieks and screams of 
my brother's soul as the devil fastened his talons 
in it forever and ever. And when I awoke up, 
agitated and frightened, the light had gone out. 
And," said he, " I jumped up and lit the lamp. I 
walked up to the bed. There was my poor brother, 
lying with his mouth wide open and dead. And I 
believe God shut my eyes in sleep to show me the 
scene that presented itself in that room." 



S AY I ls[ G S . 

Faith is the principle on which Omnipotence 
slumbers. 

God loves righteousness and hates sin. The 
devil loves sin and hates righteousness. That is 
the difference. 



Sbrmon XIII. 

SX. PAUL'S I^AST A?VORDS. 

" But watch thou in all things, endure aflElictions, do the 
work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry." — 
2 Tim. iv, 5. 

THAT is what St. Paul said to Timothy, and 
then he added : " For I am now ready to be 
offered and the time of my departure is at hand. I 
have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, 
I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up 
for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, 
the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day, and 
not to me only, but unto all them also that love his 
appearing.^' Now, in the verse which we read as 
a text, St. Paul said four things to Timothy ; and 
these words we might denominate his dying Avords — 
the last words of one of the greatest men God ever 
made. I have been frequently touched by reading 
the words of St. Paul to Timothy. I have seen the 
fatherly interest and the tender, watchful care that 
St. Paul bestowed upon Timothy, his own son in 
the Gospel ; and now that they have had their last 
conversation, as they have preached and labored 
and eaten and walked and talked together for the 
last time ; and as all earthly association and com- 
munication is cut off forever, and St. Paul is about 
to pass to his reward, he has something to say to 
Timothy. 

How the last words of a dying neighbor im- 
22 257 



258 Sermons and Sayings. 

press us, and how the last words of a good father 
fasten themselves upon us ! How the last words 
of a good mother are cherished by us ! We can 
forget a thousand things father said while he lived, 
but we can never forget the last words of a good 
father. We forget a thousand things that mother 
said in life and health, but the last words of a 
precious mother linger with us like the memory of 
a pleasant dream. The last words of Paul to 
Timothy, and through Timothy to us ! And O, how 
much St. Paul compassed in these three lines. 

The first thing he said to Timothy was this: 
" Watch thou in all things." If there ever was a 
day in the world's history when the people of God 
ought to be vigilant and watchful, it is now. This 
watchful spirit is the sentinel of the soul — the sen- 
tinel on the outpost. I am commanded to be vigi- 
lant, to be watchful, because my adversary, the 
devil, is going about like a roaring lion seeking 
whom he may devour. I am commanded to be 
vigilant and to be watchful because I wrestle not 
against flesh and blood, but against powers and 
principalities and spiritual wickedness in high places. 
General Washington said whenever danger was im- 
minent and the enemy was near by : '^ Put no one 
but Americans on the outposts to-night." And 
now while enemies surround us on all sides and 
press upon us in every direction, is it not best that 
we put none but the most vigilant souls upon the 
watch-tower, and that we put the sentinels that be- 
long to our own souls on the outposts, the most 
faithful. It was death for a sentinel to sleep at his 



St. Paul's Last Woeds. 259 

post. Do you wonder why they were so severe on 
poor fellows for going to sleep out on post? I'll 
tell you why. The safety, the peace, the lives of 
60,000 men are in the hands of that sentinel out 
there on the outpost, and for him to go to sleep on 
post means to have the enemy charge upon a camp 
of sleeping soldiers and butcher them in their bunks. 
No wonder the general says to his sentinel on the 
post : " It is death to go to sleep on the outpost 
there.'' And I tell you another thing: The way 
God talks to us, it is mighty near death to you and 
me if we ever forget to obey the text, and fail to be 
watchful. 

Another Scriptural term for this same expres- 
sion or thought is this : 

^^ Walk circumspectly." 

Now, that word ^^ circumspectly " is a Latin de- 
rived word, a compound word. It means "looking 
around you." The Indian walking in the primal 
forests of this country, inhabited by all kinds of 
wild beasts and reptiles, walked with perfect safety, 
because he walked circumspectly. The Indian bade 
his squaw and his children good-by in the morning 
and went into the wild forests, inhabited by wild 
beasts and reptiles, and they did not think of his 
safety. They knew that if the enemy approached 
him from the right, he saw him. If the enemy 
came from the front he saw him. To the left he 
saw him. If he approached from the rear, his keen 
sense of hearing and seeing detected it. If it was 
a wild beast crouched on a limb above his pathway, 
he saw him. If it was a hissing serpent underneath 



260 Seemons ais^d Sayings. 

on his pathway, he saw him. And the Indian 
walked in perfect safety, because he walked circum- 
spectly. Circumspectly! A man walks along and 
looking ahead of him is not walking circumspectly. 
A man who just looks to the right and looks ahead 
is not walking circumspectly. If a man looks on 
both sides and to the front he is not walking cir- 
.cumspectly. If a man looks to the rear and in 
front and on both sides he is not walkino^ circum- 
spectly. If a man looks above him and in front 
and on both sides and to the rear, he is not walking 
circumspectly. But if he look above and beneath 
and in front and to the right and to the left and in 
the rear, and in walking looks around both ways and 
all ways, then he is walking circumspectly, looking 
in every direction. 

I know not from what direction the enemy may 
attack. I know not whether it shall be from the 
left or from the right, from the front or from the 
rear. I know not what sort of enemy it may be, 
and I know not the direction he may come upon 
me, and so I shall obey the Scripture and walk cir- 
cumspectly, looking around both ways. Both ways ! 
Walking circumspectly ! Well, I must not only 
walk looking all around me both w^ays and looking 
outward, but I must look within. Look at myself. 
Spurgeon said all our enemies are comprehended 
under three heads: The world, the flesh and the 
devil. He said: "The devil is a cunning old 
enemy. O, how cunning he is ! but by the 
grace of God I can conquer the devil. This old 
world,'' he adds, "is a multitudinous affair with 



St. Paul's Last Woeds. 261 

ten thousand things to attract and seduce me, but 
by the grace of God I can conquer the world. 
But/' he said, " Good Lord, deliver me from my- 
self." 

Nine-tenths of your trouble and my trouble is 
not on the outside at all. It is inside. There 's 
where the trouble is. As I heard a brother say 
to-day: "You can go out in the world as much as 
you please, but you had better mind how you get 
the world into you." Sometimes we mislocate 
things, like the good old brother that called on 
Bishop Wightman. Down in Mobile, Alabama, the 
bishop had been holding conference, and a good old 
brother came up to him in his room one day and 
said to the bishop ; " I have n't been to my Church 
in two years. I have n't been out at all in that 
time." "Well," said the bishop, "why is that, 
brother." " Why," said he, " they have got the 
devil right behind the pulpit." "What?'^ he says, 
"got the devil right behind the pulpit?" "Yes," 
he says, " they have. Just as soon as I walk into 
the church the first thing I see is the devil right 
behind the pulpit." " Why, brother," said the 
bishop, " what in the world do you mean?" " Why," 
he says, "it's the organ they've got in there." 
" Well," said Bishop Wightman, in his polite way, 
"I guess when you go into the church the devil is 
in there sure enough, but you do n't locate him right. 
He 's not in there right behind the pulpit, but he 's 
in you. He 's in you. You 've mislocated things. 
There 's the trouble." 

I heard a good old brother say once that when 



262 Sermons and Sayings. 

a man got mad with him, he always spoke kind 
words and said kind things. "Why/^ said he, 
"when a man wants to raise a difficulty with me 
and talk bad things to me, if I get mad, the devil 
will come out of that fellow into me, and he ^11 
divide devils with me. He 's got enough for both." 
And the trouble with humanity is that they do n't 
locate things right. And without locating your 
enemy, you can never fight him successfully. That's 
the truth. The wisest general in this whole war 
was the general, not that knew so much how his 
troops were arranged, but who disposed his troops 
by the arrangement of his enemy's troops, so that 
his strongest point was just opposite the strongest 
point of his enemy. And the Christian man, who 
is best equipped to fight the devil, is the Christian 
man who not only knows the strength of the devil, 
but knows exactly where he is located and all 
about him. 

Watch ! Your trouble, if rightly located, is 
within and not without you. I would rather fight 
a thousand enemies outside of the fort than to fight 
one enemy inside of the fort. There are more dan- 
gers on the inside. And now let us see what we 
have inside to betray us. 

Well, let 's see ! Is there any body here troubled 
with a spirit of neglect ? That is a fearful enemy 
on the inside — the spirit of neglect. I do n't care 
what else you have or do n't have — if you have got 
that you are betrayed. As I have said before, 
you may take the best man in this city, he may be 
every thing you want him to be, but you just let 



St. Paul's Last Words. 263 

him neglect to pay his debts and there is n't any 
body in this town will have any respect for him. 
Is n't that true ? And we must reach the point 
where we see that the strength of the Christian is 
in the earnest, persistenf discharge of every duty 
that God enjoins upon us. 

Keglect! Neglect to pray; neglect to read the 
Bible ; neglect to walk uprightly before God ; neglect 
any Christian duty — the man who does it, does it at 
the cost of his soul. The spirit of neglect ! Now 
if you take a man who has prayed night and morn- 
ing in his family, just get him to leave it oif at night, 
say for instance, or leave it off in the morning, for in- 
stance; and just let him to neglect it a time or two, 
and you know that the next thing that will happen 
is that he will quit it altogether. Just let a fellow 
neglect his prayer-meeting two or three times, and 
he gets so he won't w^ant to go at all. Just let a 
man neglect to read his Bible for a few days, and 
he '11 get so he won't want to look at his Bible at all. 
O, the spirit of neglect ! It has cost millions of souls ! 

Neglect! And every time Christ prefigured 
judgment, the fellow that was condemned was con- 
demned for neglect — every one of them — and in no 
instance was one condemned for w^hat he had done, 
but condemned for what he had not done. 

Neglect! You let a man begin to neglect his 
business — it goes right down. Let a man begin to 
neglect his religion — it goes right down. Let the 
member of a Church begin to neglect prayer-meet- 
ing, he goes right dow^n to zero. Let the member 
of the Church begin to neglect to pay the preacher, 



264 Sermoiss and Sayings. 

and the first thing you know he ^s a pauper. Do n't 
you see how the thing goes? And I tell you all, 
in every part and department of religious life, 
aggressiveness and fidelity is found in the fact that 
we do not leave any gaps down, but put them all up. 

Neglect ! Well, then, I will watch not only the 
spirit of neglect that might take possession of me, 
but I will watch my tongue. O, me ! these tongues 
of ours give us more trouble than any thing and 
every thing else in the world ! It is n't what we 
do, but it's what we say that keeps us in trouble 
every time. It's what we say. I will watch my 
tongue. I declare sometimes I almost wish I 
had n't any tongue. O, me ! if we just had some 
way of regulating every word we utter, as a Presi- 
dent can recall some minister or some consul that 
he had sent off somewhere — O, what a grand thing 
that would be ! Brethren, I 'd spend the next ten 
years in recalling — I think I would — I 'd be busy 
at it, I 'd be busy ; and the only way I can do now 
is to watch my tongue. And I declare to you, if a 
man opens his door his dog runs out in the street 
before he knows it. It is astonishing how many 
things will come up, and come when he least ex- 
pects it, upon his tongue. 

I will watch my tongue. I will watch my 
temper. The noun " temper," is not in the Bible 
at all. The verb "to temper," is in the Bible. 
Do you know where we get that idea of the word 
"temper?" We get it from the blacksmith's shop, 
where the blacksmith, for instance, is shaping an 
ax and upsetting the blade of it; he heats the 



St. Paulas Last Words. 265 

blade again and pushes it down into the water, and, 
taking it out, he watches it take its color, and again 
he pushes it into the water and takes it out and 
watches it takes it color, and then directly he passes 
it to the hand of the farmer and says: "I think 
that is tempered, but I do n't know. If you will 
grind it and take it out to that knotty pine log and 
throw it in a time or two I will be able to tell you 
whether it is tempered or not." And the farmer 
takes up the ax, and goes out to the knotty pine 
log and strikes it a time or two, and it is full of 
notches, and the edge all turned and gone. He 
takes it back to the blacksmith and says : " You 
missed it this time; look here, it is notched all over 
with gaps." And the blacksmith takes it and puts 
it in the fire again and tests it, and when the owner 
takes it out to the log, its edge is all right and he 
says: ^^This edge is perfect." That is where we 
get our idea of temper. 

Many a time we have had our dispositions in 
the shop, and we have upset them and we have 
tempered them, and now we say, " Well, now, I 
never will get that way any more; I have got the 
edge all right this time; I got it tempered up in 
every respect," and the first old knotty log we get to, 
away it goes and the notches are all broke out and 
the edge is turned off, and we say, " La, me, it 's of 
no use for me to try at all ; I did worse this time 
than I ever did before." Have n't you ever felt 
that ? O, this temper of ours ! A good temper will 
stand any thing without the breaking out of a gap 
or the turning of the edge. 

23 



266 Sermons and Sayings. 

There is a great difference between good nature 
and good temper. I have heard people say, " O, 
that person has less temper than any body I ever 
saw/^ Well, he is of less account than any body 
you ever saw, if you mean by that he is simply good- 
natured. I tell you it takes a man with immense 
temper, and when that temper is of the right sort, 
then it is you've got the finest character 
this world ever saw. I heard a lady say about a 
cook once, "That is the best - natured, kindest, 
cleverest, best girl in this Avorld, and the only thing 
I have against her is, she is of no account in the 
world, that you ever saw.'' That 's the only thing 
she has against her, "She is no account in the 
world, that you ever saw." 

I like temper, but I want it to be on the edge 
right, and I want to be sure that that temper is 
managed right, and we can only have good tempers 
with vigilant, watchful care over them. The best 
way I ever managed my temper was to clinch my 
teeth together and not let my tongue run a bit. 
Your tongue is a sort of a revolving fan to the fire, 
and the first time you let your tongue go, you are 
gone. Did you ever try to clinch your teeth this 
way together and try to keep a padlock on your 
tongue when you felt as if you were going to get 
mad ? Did you ever try to sit down on your tongue 
once ? If you '11 do it, you '11 be astonished. 

I will watch my temper, I will watch my tongue, 
I will watch my disposition, I will watch within, I 
will watch without, I will be vigilant, I won't be 
surprised by any thing. I am going to see my 



St. Paul's Last Woeds. 267 

enemy approach, I am going to watch him as he 
comes, and I am going to meet him as he comes. 
I thought after I was converted and went to 
preaching, that it was a man's duty to defend him- 
self, and a man has to get mad always to do that; 
and I recollect a time or two when I got what I 
thought to be an insult, and there was a personal 
fracas. Well, the last one I had I got into the fuss 
all over, and it seemed as if the Lord had about 
turned me loose for good, and I just said : " Good 
Lord, if you take me back I tell you what I '11 do ; 
I will never get mad with any man on the face of 
the earth until he treats me worse than I have 
treated you." Well, sir, I have been now at it 
eleven years since I had the difficulty, and I never 
found a man yet that treated me worse than I 
treated the Lord, and until I do I am going to 
stay in a good humor with humanity. That is my 
doctrine. So I often think of the incident where 
Talmage went to the father of a boy and said : " My 
brother, your son " — a little boy about ten years 
old — "wants to join my Church. What do you 
say ?" " O, no," said the father, " he does n't want 
it ; he is too young ; he does n't know what he is 
doing." After a while he consented, and Talmage 
told him that he had joined the Church. About 
three months after that the father met Talmage, 
and he said : " There, Dr. Talmage, I told you that 
my little boy ought not to have joined the Church." 
"Why?" said Dr. Talmage. " Why," he said, "no 
later than yesterday I caught him in a point-blank 
lie." "You did?" "Yes." "How old were you 



268 Sermons and Sayings. 

when you joined the Church?" He said: " I did n't 
join the Church until I was a grown man." "Well/' 
he asked^ " hoAV many lies have you told since you 
joined the Church?" "Well/' he said, "that's a 
gray horse of another color. I never thought 
about that. That makes quite a difference, doesn't it." 

I will watch and watch in all directions, and see 
to it every day of my life that I watch the ap- 
proaches of every enemy, and I'll fight them as 
they come. 

Well, when St. Paul tells me to manifest always 
and possess always this watchful, vigilant spirit, 
then he says, " Endure afflictions." It is one thing 
to do the will of God and it is quite another thing 
to suffer the will of God. Almost any body is 
veiling to be a hammer and strike for God, but 
very few people are willing to be an anvil and be 
struck for God. And there is quite a difference 
between the two. Almost any body is willing to 
go out and knock any body else down for God, but 
are you Avilling to be knocked down for God ? That 
is the question. 

I think one of the most impressive things I ever 
heard was of a young man belonging to the Young 
Men's Christian Association who was standing out 
on the sidewalk in a city, handing dodgers to folks 
out in the street, and pointing up to the room 
where they were going to hold the service. A gentle- 
man who walked along with the crowd saw this 
young man hand a dodger to a fellow, and the man 
peeled away with his fist and had like to have 
knocked him down on the sidewalk, but the young 



St. Paul's Last Words. 269 

man regained his foothold and was ready with a 
dodger as another came along. Directly another one 
slapped him in the face as he gave him a dodger, 
and the gentleman became interested in watching 
how he took it ; and he said he staid there, and, in a 
few minutes, he put a dodger into a man's hand, and 
the man caught him and mashed him right down on 
the ground, and tore one of his coat-sleeves off, and 
bruised him up generally. But he got up and had 
another dodger ready for the next man that came 
along. And the stranger went up in the room and 
heard a young man talk, and he said, " Gentlemen, 
I never heard a sermon in my life yet that im- 
pressed me, but I stood out here before your door 
and saw how the roughs mistreated that young man 
over there, and I saw the spirit in which he ac- 
cepted it, and I walked in here to your meet- 
ing, and I want the very same spirit that made that 
boy take all that in the spirit which he did.'' 

Ah, brethren, " Endure affliction." It is the 
hardest thing in the world to do so. Humanity 
wants to fight back and kick back and talk back. 
I have felt that a thousand times, and I never 
fought back or kicked back or talked back in my 
life that I was not sorry that I did it. The best 
thing is to stand and hold out and let your enemy 
kick himself to death, and he will soon do that 
if you will hold right still. A soldier in the last 
war said: ^'One of the hardest things I had to do 
was to lie still under fire." And this affliction here 
is nothing but the bearing and pressure and weight 
of the "tribulum." That tribulum we get from the 



270 Sermons and Sayings. 

old threshing-floor where the wheat was spread out 
in the straw on the floor, and where a man got a 
big long hickory pole and shaved it down thin in 
the middle so it would have a spring to it, and he 
came down on the wheat and beat away there by 
the hour; and that was the " tribulum '^ coming 
down on the wheat. Do you know what he was 
up to ? He was getting the wheat separated from 
the straw and chafi: The tribulum is the weight, 
you see, and when God comes down hard with the 
tribulum he is just beating the wheat out of the 
straw and chaff, and the great astonishment to me 
is that the Lord will beat away so hard and so long 
to get as little wheat as there is in us. And God 
is obliged to be patient and, with tender mercy, 
to beat sixty years on some of us and never get 
more than half a peck of wheat after sixty years. 

" Endure affliction.'^ That is it. Bear what- 
ever is sent upon you; and I will tell you there is 
nothing like affliction. Many a time a man has 
grown careless and godless and worldly in the 
Church, and the Lord has tried every fair means to 
touch him and move him. And there is a man now. 
The doctor says : " I am sure it is typhoid fever," 
and on the fifteenth day he says to his wife: "His 
case is getting a little doubtful." On the twentieth 
day the doctor says: "You may prepare for the 
worst." He hears the whispering — he is lying there 
on his bed, and the old clock ticking so loud there 
on the mantel — he hears the doctor talking to his 
wife just outside of the room door, and he can see 
his wife's lip quiver and see her wipe the tear from 



St. Paulas Last Words. 271 

her eye, and he heard the doctor say : ^^ You can 
prepare for the worst.'^ The twenty-first morning 
the doctor says, ^' He is a shade better, the crisis is 
come, he is turning, there is a chance for him.'' 

The thirty-fifth day he is sitting up in a big old 
arm-rocker, with his dressing coat on, and his wife 
gone out of the room, and the children gone out of 
the room, and he says : " Well, thank God, I am 
up one more time in this world ;" and he gets up 
and walks to the door by the help of the chair that 
he drags along with him ; he turns the key and 
locks it, and he walks back and he kneels down be- 
tween the arms of that old chair and he says : 
/* Thank God ; I am well one more time, getting 
well. He has spared my life, and now, God, on my 
knees I promise you, I am going to make a better 
member of the Church and a better father and a 
better husband than I have ever made." And he 
gets up off his knees and God blesses him, and 
he claps his hands and says : ^^ Glory to God ! He 
is so good to me.'' God had to take that fellow 
and put him on a forty days' case of typhoid fever 
to get him where he could bless him. Do n't you see ? 

O, how much goodness in the Lord ! He won't 
let us be lost until he has done his very best on 
us. I tell you, take almost any fellow and take 
him over a coffin a time or two and turn him 
loose and he will hit the ground running every 
time. He will do better. 

"Endure affliction." Sometimes it doesn't last 
very long. I recollect a case down in my town 
where I was pastor. I worked on a fellow all 



272 Seehons axd Sayi^'gs. 

during the meeting, could n^t do any thing with 
him, but he was taken down with bilious fever and 
he got to death's door. They thought he was gone. 
And, O, what promises he made that he would do 
better if he got well. And two or three weeks 

after he got better I said : ^^ Brother B , how 

are you getting along ?'^ He said: "I am getting 
better all the time." '' Well," I said, " how about 
your soul?" "Well," he says, " I ^m afraid that 
isn't doing much better." "Didn't you promise 
the Lord that you would do better if you got 
well?" "Yes," he said, "Mr. Jones, I did, but I 
tell you a fellow is going to promise 'most any 
thing when he gets down as far as I did." 
"Endure affliction." Whatever is sent upon you 
bear without a word, for I declare to you there is 
nothing like patience under affliction. When the 
Lord's providence touches us, let us not fight, but lean 
up against God's arms, and perhaps he will lay the 
rod down and won't strike a lick. The best way 
to fight God is to run up to God. I found out 
when I was twelve years old that when my father 
wanted to lick me, the closer I got to him the 
better. I found that out. 

St. Paul next says, "Do the w^ork of an evan- 
gelist." Now you say, "That just had reference to 
Timothy; that does not have a reference to us at 
all." Do you know that God intends in the salva- 
tion of every soul that you should be propagandists 
yourselves? Did you ever think of that? The 
trouble is, you have turned the world over to us 
preachers, and you have turned it over to a sorry 



St. Paul's Last Words. 273 

set, and we are not half running it, God knows. But 
I reckon we do the best we can with the material on 
hand. There is some hickory the Lord himself 
could not make an ax~handle out of unless he makes 
the hickory over again. 

We preachers have had charge of the Churches and 
the salvation of this world now, in a sense, for eighteen 
hundred years, and we have just gotten one man in 
every twenty-eight to profess to be a Christian, and 
only about one in those twenty-eight is one when 
you weigh him up right. We are making big head- 
way, ain't we? We preachers are good clever men 
and do the best we can, but God never intended 
that the world should be handed over to us. He in- 
tends that every converted man shall be a preacher 
in a sense, going out and doing work as an evange- 
list. Suppose that every member of the Church 
should this January say : " God helping me, I will 
win one soul during this year for Christ." Then the 
membership next January will be double if that 
promise is observed. And if the promise were re- 
newed then, on the succeeding January the member- 
ship will be four times as many. And on and on 
and on and in this way, before your heads grow gray 
all over this Church could turn this whole city to 
Christ. That is geometrical progression, and God is 
going to convert this world just that way. Listen ! 
When one-half of the world is converted to God and 
that half says: ^^ One soul apiece to-morrow for 
Christ," and all go out and bring one soul to Christ, 
then every body is converted and a nation is born 
to God in a day ! You see how it works? 



274 Seemons and Sayings.. 

One soul a year ! It does look as if every 
Christian ought to win one soul a year, or go out 
of the business. If I could not do that I would 
just quit in utter despair, I would. And I want to 
say to you all to-night just this : Just a few years 
ago, down in Georgia, God stooped down and touched 
my poor, ruined, wilted, blasted soul and called it 
back to life. I started out the weakest, frailest 
thing, and I declare that when I went to Atlanta to 
join the conference I had no idea they would take 
me. I could not see how they would take such a 
fellow as I was and put him to work; and when 
they put me on a circuit I was the happiest man 
you ever saw; and when I got nearly home — I had 
not thought about what the thing would pay — a 
man stepped up and said : " Jones, that circuit they 
have sent you on never paid but $65 a year to its 
preacher.'^ I listened, but that statement did not 
bother me a bit. I was happy that I had a place 
to go to work in. I commenced preaching six or 
seven or eight times a week, preaching and meeting 
in private houses, schools and Churches, working 
as hard as I could and working right on. I started 
out to do my duty toward God and man, and the 
three years I spent in that work were the happiest 
three years, it seems now, of all my life. And God 
saw to it that we had three square meals a day and 
respectable clothes, and that is as much as you have. 
Do you have any more ? If you do, where do you 
put it ? Some of you put it in the bank ; some in 
railroad stock. Yes! 

I do not reckon there has been a mind in this 



St. Paul's Last Woeds. 275 

century that has been under higher pressure than 
"William H. Vanderbilt. There were many things 
about that man I honor — many things about his life 
I would have the business men of this world emu- 
late. I will say this much about him : the last even- 
ing, when he dropped out of his chair and fell to 
the floor, when the railroad president was talking to 
him — when he sat in that chair he was the richest 
man in America ; when he fell on that floor he was 
as poor as I am. When I leave this world I want 
my friends to say, " I am glad there is a good man 
gone to heaven.^' When Vanderbilt died every 
body wanted to know, " How will it aflect the Stock 
Exchange ?'' That seemed to be the only question 
in New York City, " How will it aflect the Stock 
Exchange T^ They did not seem to care much 
about the man. They did not seem to have much 
to say about his funeral. The whole thing rested 
as on a pivot on that one question : " How will his 
death aflfect the stock market V^ 

Now, sir, as God is my judge, all along through 
my religious life, the one burning desire of my soul 
has been to see others brought to Christ. I have 
worked on and on and on, and I tell you, the happiest 
moments of my life have been the moments w4ien I 
have seen men's souls given to Christ. The one 
earnest prayer of my life has been, '^ God help me 
to help souls to Christ.'' Brothers, how do you 
feel about that? I may gather together a fortune, 
but it may curse my children ; but if I gather souls 
to Christ, how grand that is. 

This recalls the dream of a young lady — I 



276 Seemons and Sayings. 

do not go much on dreams^ but there was some- 
thing impressive about this one. A young lady 
dreamed that she died and went to heaven. 
As she stood around the great white throne 
she saw that every one there had on a beau- 
tiful crown, and that beautiful stars decked each 
crown. She approached a sister spirit and said, 
" What do these stars represent in these crowns ?'' 
The sister spirit replied, " These stars represent the 
souls we have been instrumental in saving/^ and 
she said, "I thought I reached up and pulled off 
my crown and it was blank, and I began to be mis- 
erable in heaven. And all at once I awoke and 
praised God that I was stillout of heaven, and I 
said, ^ I will spend the rest of my days in winning 
stars for my crov\^n of rejoicing in the sweet by 
and by.' " 

How many of us here to-night if we should die 
now and go to heaven would wear a starless crown 
forever? May God help me as I journey through 
life to gather souls to God, that they may be stars — 
not in my crown, but, blessed be God, I would put 
them all in my Master's crown, and say to him : 
^^You are worthy of them. You shed your blood 
and died that they might be redeemed.'' 

Lastly St. Paul said : '' Make full proof of thy 
ministry." I do love to see a soul go and work in 
earnest for Christ and work on until the work is 
completed, and then shout over the results. That is 
just what this means. I will illustrate this. I can 
get through quicker in that way. I had once in my 
charge, when I was a pastor, a precious good wife 



St. Paul's Last Words. 277 

and mother. Fourteen years before that she mar- 
ried a young man, sober and industrious ; but after 
their marriage he commenced associating with drink- 
ing men. He soon began to drink himself, and he 
led a very dissipated life for several years, and finally 
he was taken home with delirium tremens. One 
morning two doctors came and examined him, and 
they called his wife aside and said : " Madam, your 
husband will die to-day .'' She looked at the doctor 
and said, " No, he won't die to-day.'' " Well," they 
said, "madam, these symptoms that are on him 
never fail. He will die." " No," she said, " doctor, 
he won't die." "How do you know?" they asked. 
She said, " I have been praying for fourteen years 
to God to convert that man and save him before he 
dies. And," she said, " I have prayed earnestly 
and with faith, and I know he is not going to die. 
I do not care a cent about your symptoms." That 
evening the doctors came back and examined her 
husband, and said he was better. She said, " I have 
not been uneasy about him. I knew God had not 
converted him, and I knew God would not let him 
die until he was converted. If he were to die in 
the condition he is in, I would be an infidel. I 
could never have believed that God hears and an- 
swers prayer. I have been praying for his con- 
version for fourteen years, and I knew God would 
not let him die before he was converted." 

The man got better and he was converted, and 
he led a pure, good life for two years, and then, 
under some fearful temptation, he fell and began 
drinking again. She went back to God and prayed : 



278 Sermons and Sayings. 

'^ Good Lord, save my poor husband at any cost. I 
will work my hands oif to support my seven chil- 
dren. My God, save my poor husband. I do not 
care what becomes of us.^' 

Two or three months afterward her husband 
was taken with articular rheumatism, the most 
fearful kind of rheumatism that ever afflicted 
humanity. There he suffered day after day, and he 
turned his heart again to God. He was the most 
meek and patient sufferer you ever saw, just trust- 
ing in God every moment. One morning when his 
wife was standing by he said : " Good-bye, precious 
wife. The moments are coming when I shall leave 
you, and when I shall leave you — and I owe it all 
to you and Christ — I shall go to heaven and pass 
into the joys of the blessed/' 

She stood over him until his last breath had 
gone, and his face was placid and calm in death. 
As soon as she saw sure enough that he had gone 
into eternity, she clasped her hands and cried : 
" Glory to God, he is saved ! Now I will work 
my hands off to support my children." And that 
woman to-day is a precious Christian mother of 
seven children, and she is training them for a 
better life. 

Mothers and sisters, when you get in earnest 
you will see this world with all its glitter and 
fearful influences. Now let us say : '^ I am going 
to pray for some persons and will never stop until 
they are converted." Will you do that and interest 
yourselves in souls around us ? O, that every one 
in this meeting would save a soul for Christ ! 



Skrmon XIV. 

KSCAF»K F'OIi THY LIKE. 

"And it came to pass when they had brought them forth 
abroad, that he said, Escape for thy hfe ; look not behind 
thee, neither stay thou in all the plain ; escape to the moun- 
tain lest thou be consumed." — Gen. xix. 17. 

I HAVE but three questions that I would propound 
to any raan as he stands up preaching righteousness 
to me. The first question I would ask any minis- 
ter of the Gospel is this : " Are you posted upon 
the subject which you are discussing? Do you 
know what you are talking about?" And when 
this question is satisfactorily answered, I will put a 
second one to him : " Do you mean kindly toward 
me ?" And then I have but one more to ask, and 
that is : ^^ Do you live what you preach ?" With 
these three questions answered in the affirmative, I 
throw open the doors of my heart and conscience 
to any man who will so answer them. 

We have selected as the text for this evening 
the four words of the seventeenth verse of the nine- 
teenth chapter of the Book of Genesis : " Escape 
for thy life." 

There is implanted in the bosom of every raan 
an instinctive love of life ; and also implanted by 
the hand of God in this same bosom, the fear of 
death. We all love life; we all fear death. 
There's only one thing in the universe that's 
stronger than my love of life and my dread of death, 

279 



280 Seemons and Sayings. 

and that 's despair, and suicide is the last retreat for 
despair. I need n^t stop here to argue the proposi- 
tion that men love life and dread death. The 
thousands and the millions of dollars that are spent 
yearly for physicians, and remedies and patent med- 
icines and mineral springs, and the sanitary features 
of your cities and your towns, is practical proof that 
I assert the truth. 

I might stop here long enough to say that there 
are certain physical substances that we know per- 
petuate life; and that there are certain physical 
substances which produce death. There is such a 
thing as wholesome food for the physical man, and 
there is such a thing as poison — one perpetuates life, 
physical life, and the other produces death. These 
are plain propositions we all understand. 

Man in his very nature is a trinity in unity; he 
has a physical being, an intellectual being, and an 
immortal or spiritual being. Just as it is true, there- 
fore, that certain physical substances, wholesome in 
their nature, tend to perpetuate life, and certain 
poisons will produce physical death, just so certain 
is it, also, that there are certain lines of moral con- 
duct that tend to perpetuate moral life, and certain 
lines of immoral conduct that produce moral death. 
If one is true the other 's true. Cincinnati, with all 
her boasted financial standing, with all her intelli- 
gence, and with all her art, presents the picture 
every day to your eyes that sin is debauching and 
dooming and damning your people. I have but to 
walk out on your streets wdth my eyes open, and 
with my ears open, and I can see that thousands of 



Escape for Thy Life. 281 

people are lost, whether there 's any death or hell, 
or not. They are lost to all that is good, and all 
that is pure, and all that is noble, and all that is 
true. 

Brother, when a man is lost to the true and the 
beautiful and the good, what deeper, darker hell 
would you have than that? The exhortation of 
this text is, " Escape for thy life." The significa- 
tion that is put on this text is that we should look 
at the power behind an exhortation like this. All 
that is beautiful and glorious in heaven on the one 
side, and all that is unutterable on earth and inex- 
pressible in hell is just behind this exhortation, 
^' Escape for thy life." 

Sin is the one thing in this universe that can 
permanently damage a man, and eternally damn 
him. Disappointment may worry him, and grief 
may sadden him, and adversity may bring hardship 
and hunger to his life, but, blessed be God, sin is 
the only thing in the universe that can leave its 
permanent mark on character, a mark which shall 
last forever. 

We shall take the moral law, and we shall take 
the Ten Commandments as the basis, largely, in this 
discussion. I am ready to say here this evening 
that I believe God wrote the Ten Commandments 
on the tablets of stone, though the infidel may say 
that Moses wrote them, or that Hume, the historian, 
wrote them. ; but I care not who wrote them ; the 
citizen in this State that does not live on a level 
with the Ten Commandments deserves to be in the 
penitentiary. 

24 



282 Seemoxs axd Sayings. 

" The transgression of the law V' There can be 
no good citizenship where the Ten Commandments 
are infracted. There can be no such thing as safe 
political movement or social reform unless it is bot- 
tomed on the Ten Commandments. I stand on 
these Ten Commandments, brethren, and when this 
world burns to ashes I shall have a foundation as 
enduring as the God that made me. 

I will, however, discuss this in a practical way, 
and stand squarely on the Bible principle and on 
the God side of the questions. If you see this 
matter diflPerently from what I do, it will be because 
you occupy a different standpoint. If you come up 
where I stand you will see it as I do. If I go 
down where you are I will see it as you see it, but 
I 'm afraid to go down there any more. I ^m afraid 
I might die there, and be lost forever. 

I. We will take up first the sin most commonly 
practiced among men, and that is the sin of profanity. 
O, what a fearful sin, in all its aggravated guilt and 
its general use in this land, is this sin of profanity. 
Old men swear, and young men swear, and women 
s^war and children swear, and we 're almost a nation 
of swearers to-day as Ave walk up and down the 
land. I want to show you what a profane swearer 
is. I want to locate him ; I want to tree him this 
evening, and twist him out of his hole and let you 
see him as God and his angels see him. 

The sin of profanity ! I read in these Ten 
Commandments this : ^' Thou shalt not take the 
name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord 
will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in 



Escape for Tpiy Life. 283 

vain.'' "Let your communication be Yea, yea, 
Nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these 
Cometh of evil." I will read you another of the 
commandments, "Thou shalt not steal." Here are 
two commandments, "Thou shalt not take the 
name of the Lord thy God in vain," and "Thou 
shalt not steal." You will break this first com- 
mandment, but you won't break this second one. 
You'll swear, but you won't steal. Why? Sup- 
pose I say that a man who will steal will lie and get 
drunk and curse. Well, you say, " That 's a fact." 
Let us comment on this thing : A man who will 
swear will lie and get drunk and steal. "But," 
you say, "you mustn't go back that way. You 
may come this way as much as you please, but if 
you go back that way you'll get a fuss on your 
hands." Well, brethren, I've often heard it said: 
" It 's a poor rule that won't work both ways." 
Let's run that down a little further. 

There 's a man sitting out there that will lie, but 
he won't steal. He will blaspheme the name of God 
and smut his lips with other utterances, and stilt 
himself upon his " honor," and yet that same fellow 
would curse the virtue of the purest girl in this 
city to-night if he thought he could do it with- 
out being overtaken in his guilt. There 's many 
a man in this country stilting himself upon his 
honor. There are two commandments he will break, 
and one he won't break over. I have logic, I have 
human life squarely on my side when I say that 
when a man that has a condition of the heart and 
life that will let him persistently break one command- 



284 Seemons ais^d Sayi:n'gs. 

ment, all you 've got to do is to turn him loose and 
he '11 break them all. 

" Thou shalt not swear and steal.'' God said 
both with all the power of his nature. That man 
says : " I swear, but I won't steal." Why ? " I can 
swear all around." Thou shalt not swear. "That's 
nothing in my way." Thou shalt not steal. A 
fellow does n't go around that much before he strikes 
the sheriff and the judge and the jail. Do n't you 
see? Is it because you are afraid that the sheriff 
and the judge and the jail are round there ? I want 
you to see this — that 's all ! I assert it, with all the 
sincerity of my nature, that a man who will break 
one commandment habitually and persistently, if 
you '11 make every thing else even, he '11 break 
them all. He doesn't care about God. 

I made this proposition one day : '' I want 
every fellow who went into the rebel army cursing, 
and did n't steal any thing, to stand up." Directly a 
fellow stood up over in the corner, and I said : 
" They must have kept things out of your reach, 
old fellow." That old fellow told a lie, or they 
kept things mighty close — one thing or the other. 
You take one of these swearing men at home and 
put him in the army and he will go out and steal 
a bee-gum and then he'll steal a sheep and stay 
with a lewd woman all night and disgrace himself 
before God and men and angels. I tell you, brother, 
that sin in its fearful influence permeates our system, 
and when the cancer breaks out on your tongue it 
is in your blood from head to foot. If you stop 
cursing and put a salve on your tongue it will 



Escape for Thy Life. 285 

break out on your hand, and you '11 steal something. 
It's in you, and you've got to get it out. 

Profanity! How much there is of it in this 
land ! A mother sends her little boy down street 
to get a spool of thread, and the little fellow walks 
three blocks, and O! he can't get back to his in- 
nocent mother until some wretch has sowed his little 
heart full of the seed of profanity ! 

O ! how much profanity curses this State and 
this country ! I often think of the grandmother of 
little Willie, who was on the train which stopped 
for a few minutes for some cause, and the two gen- 
tlemen who were carrying on their conversation, 
swore and swore awfully, and the grandmother 
jabbed the ends of her fingers into the ears of little 
Willie and compressed them tight, so that Willie 
would not hear their awful profanity. Willie sat 
still for a little while and then he shook his head 
and moved about, and he was so restless he would 
not let his grandmother hold her fingers in his 
ears; so she rushed up the aisle and said to the 
two swearers : " Gentlemen, my little Willie won't 
let me hold my thumbs in his ears, and I would n't 
have him hear this awful talk for the world; it's 
the height of impudence, and shows how you were 
raised, by sitting among strangers and pouring out 
your profanity in the ears of people." I could 
travel in perfect peace but for this one thing! 
These railroads have got up their sleeping-cars 
and their mail and baggage and express-cars, 
and they jnst lack one more car. I want them to 
put on a cursing-car for black-monthed travelers. 



286 Seemons and Sayings. 

Profanity ! Profanity ! I recollect on the streets 
of my own town, when I was a boy, we were all 
standing on the corner, and the minister passed by 
just as I swore. He laid his hand on my shoulder 
and said : ^^ Young man, do n't curse that man. It 
is just like holding a coal of fire in your hand and 
squeezing your fingers on it and saying ^ Coal of 
fire, burn some one else.^'^ I always thought of 
that afterwards, that it was " Coal of fire, burn some 
one else/' That fearful, excuseless sin — profanity ! 
When the devil wants to catch a good man he baits 
his hook and covers it up, and then they do n't bite, 
but when he wants to catch a profane swearer, he 
throws in the naked hook, and says, " Fool, gobble 
it down," and the fool gobbles it down. 

Profanity ! What does it pay you ? Nobody 
thinks any more of you because you swear. It 
doesn't help you in business. It doesn't make 
any body think any more of you ; it does n't make 
your wife think any more of you. If you are a 
professed swearer and user of profanity, you just 
lack that much of being a gentleman, I don't care 
what else you may be. 

This excuseless and useless profanity! Boys, 
let's assert our manhood, and our sense of justice 
and the good that's in us, and let's say this after- 
noon, " I have sworn my last oath. "Whatever else 
I may be doomed for, I won't curse my way to 
hell." Boys, let's quit this profanity. There's no 
manhood in it. There's no beauty in it. There's 
no business in it. 

I heard a drummer say once that he went out 



Escape for Thy Life. 287 

on the road with another drummer, who had differ- 
ent samples and was in a different line of business. 
Said he : " At every town I sold goods this man 
did n^t sell any. At last, after he had failed to 
make a trade at a store I went to, when he walked 
out the proprietor said, ^ Who is that man ? ' I 
told him. ^ Well,' said he, ^you can just tell every 
drummer on the road that none of these cursing, 
blackguaid fellows need come about my store to 
sell goods; I'll quit the business before I buy any 
goods from one of them.' The other drummer 
asked me, ^ What 's the matter ? ' Said I, ^ It 's not 
your firm, or your samples, but it's you. That man 
told me he would n't buy from a profane drummer.' 
The drummer said to this, ' If that's so, I '11 quit 
now.' And he went on his way and sold after- 
wards as many goods as any other drummer on the 
road." 

Escape profanity. It will degrade you here, and 
damn you hereafter. Escape profanity. Men, let's 
say to-day, from the depths of our heart, " I '11 never 
swear again. Whatever else I may be guilty of I 'm 
done with profanity forever." 

II. How much Sabbath-breaking is done in this 
country! I want to locate you all for yourselves. 
I'll give you the worst Sabbath-breaking places in 
the country, one by one : San Francisco, first; New 
Orleans, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis. That's 
their order. Bad order, too. San Francisco, first ; 
New Orleans — the very cess-pool of hell itself, sec- 
ond ; Cincinnati, third. I'll tell you another thing. 
With your theaters turned loose, with your bar- 



288 Seemons and Sayings. 

rooms turned loose, and your places of amusement 
turned loose on the Sabbath, and your base ball on 
the Sabbath, let me tell you, you^re putting the 
red flag on the track. You put a red flag down on 
the track of that Cincinnati Southern E-ailroad, and 
when the engineer comes thundering around the 
curve and sees the flag two hundred yards in front 
of him, he reverses his engine, shuts the throttle 
dead tight, claps the air brakes on every wheel, and 
he '11 burst that boiler into ten thousand pieces be- 
fore he 'd run up to within less than one hundred 
yards of that red flag. That flag means death and 
destruction to him and to all the passengers on the 
train behind him. I tell you when you people come 
sweeping around the curve of Sabbath-breaking and 
desecration, and instead of your city officers uphold- 
ing the law they were appointed to uphold, they 
are defying the law; you may see the red flag down 
the track, and you '11 have to reverse engine and 
down brakes or you 're lost. 

I '11 tell you when the crackling flames and the 
dense smoke of your burning court-house lit up the 
sky on that terrible night of the riot, God ran up 
the red flag and said, " Call a halt." You '11 never 
have law and order and safety and good govern- 
ment in this city until the strong arm of the law 
is upheld, and every violator of the law shall suffer 
the penalty, be he a millionaire or be he the poorest 
foreigner in the city. You can see it in the air. 
We're nearing a reform. The theater men say, 
"We're done Sabbath breaking." Brethren, hear 
me on this: The fact that these men have dese- 



Escape for Thy Life. 289 

crated God's day, and have kept it up as long as it 
would pay, and until the Law and Order League 
brought them to taw — the transgressions connected 
with their past doings blot out all the glory that 
they w^ould have if they should be decent in the 
future. 

I tell you all, in God's name, this afternoon, 
forget not the commandment ^' Remember the Sab- 
bath day to keep it holy.'' May the Lord redeem 
this city from Sabbath-breaking. As an American 
I thank God for every foreigner that comes to this 
country, who is a law-abiding citizen. I thank God 
for every single foreigner in America that is a rep- 
resentative of law and order and righteousness; 
but I deplore the fact that any country or govern- 
ment is emptying upon us men who desecrate the 
law of God and the law of man, and bring anarchy 
into our midst. 

Let me tell you: If all the sins and iniquity 
committed in Cincinnati on Sabbath were repro- 
duced in Atlanta the next Sabbath the whole con- 
cern would sleep in jail that night. In Georgia we 
have a God and a Sabbath, and they 're as sacred 
to us as our wives and our children. Men break 
the Sabbath in groups and sections, and they all join 
in trying to wipe it off the face of the earth. If 
you'll find me a man that keeps the Sabbath holy, 
I will show you a man who will keep every other 
day in the week holy. Show me a man who will 
desecrate the Sabbath, and I '11 show you a man 
who '11 desecrate every other day in the week. This 

is as true as that I 'm talking to you this evening. 

25 



290 Sermons and Sayings. 

May the Lord multiply the number of Sunday- 
keepers, and give us no other sort in this city. 

III. Gambling! O, how much gambling there 
is in this country ! From the Louisiana State Lot- 
tery up, I commence at the bottom, they are gamb- 
ling! gambling! Let me tell you gamblers: The 
young man that wins at Louisiana State Lottery 
$10,000, has lost his soul, and lost his character 
ninety-nine times out of a hundred. If I ever have 
a boy that ^s fool enough to buck against the Louis- 
iana Lottery, I want him to lose every dollar 
that he puts in. It will be better for him in the 
long run. 

The truth of the business is that a good, honest 
plowboy, who plows furrows in the field for $1 a 
week, is better than one of these fast young men in 
this city that gets his money questionably, to say 
the least! When the plowboy gets his dollar at 
the end of his week's work he goes home at night 
and to his room, and when he slips oflp his pants 
he puts them under his pillow, and the eagle on 
that dollar sings like a nightingale, and lulls him 
to sleep. I like an honest dollar. They're the 
only dollars in this universe that will do a man and 
his family any good. 

Louisiana State Lottery, gambling at cards and 
speculating in " futures ! " I tell you these men who 
are called dealers in " futures " call it that to keep 
themselves from being regular blacklegs. I like the 
old greasy-deck plan the best. It is the more hon- 
est, for there you put up money on one side and 
then on the other, and things are in sight there with 



Escape for Thy Life. 291 

a vengeance ! No ^' bull " and " bear ^' business 
about that. These little Church fairs with their 
little gambling schemes will never reform this coun- 
try, and many of these things have set an example 
that has studded this country with gambling schemes 
and other dishonest transactions. Let's wash our 
hands and be honest if we starve to death! Let's 
earn our bread by the sweat of our brow ! 

IV. The dub-house in this city is the place where 
you train many a fellow for the black-leg stable. 
Club-houses ! I pushed it on to these club fellows 
in St. Louis, and they got after me and said, " Jones, 
you '11 have to let up on this business.'' I said, " Come 
down to-night; I'm going to let down on you 
fellows with a vengeance !" There is n't a social 
club in this city but what has every thing in it 
that a good man will eat, and every thing in it that 
a bad man will drink. They have bar-rooms and 
card-rooms and billiard rooms, and there is noth- 
ing in God's universe that ever damned as many 
people as these three things. There's no logic in 
heaven or hell or on earth that a man can defend 
a club with ! I feel sorry for a man when he joins 
a club. I do that ! If you do make an impression 
on one of these club fellows, they ridicule him at 
the club, and they ridicule him out of it. You 
may call me narrow-minded and bigoted on these 
things, brethren, but the day will come when you 
will stand up like a man and say : " Jones, you 're 
right on that !" 

The difference between the club bar-rooms and 
the other bar-rooms is that the latter are for the 



292 Seemons and Sayings. 

vagabondish drinkers. The club bar-rooms are be- 
hind the scenes a little, but they ^11 soon make vag- 
abonds out of their customers. They teach a fellow 
to drink and gamble, and then when he ^s learned 
these things too well they kick him out. The 
meanest thing in the world is first to damn and 
ruin a fellow and then kick him out. You Ve done 
that too. There are many of our Christian homes 
in this city that are but gambling-houses, where 
the children are trained to play cards. God pity 
the man that can^t run his house without a pack of 
cards ! 

V. Licentiousness! This is a world of licen- 
tiousness all around us. A man in a certain town 
said to me, ^' Jones, there is n^t a pure boy living in 
our city." I said, I 'm sorry. If one-half of our 
society is corrupt, O, then, when will the tidal wave 
of licentiousness begin to sweep over the other half 
of society? If our boys are all impure, when will 
this wild beast crush our daughters' virtue, and our 
mothers be no longer pure? God let my sweet 
children with their precious mother sleep in their 
graves before such a day ever comes to the United 
States of America. 

Licentiousness! As I look at this flood tide of 
uncleanliness sweeping over our country, O, what a 
harvest awaits us in the future ! Look at our 
asylums, our hospitals ! They 're full of the fruits 
of licentiousness ; and hear me, young man, that 
unholy alliance you have formed, the fruits of that 
alliance may be an innocent child born to you in 
licentiousness, and recollect, as the basest woman in 



Escape for Thy Life. 293 

Cincinnati bears that innocent child in her arms, 
that it 's your mother's grandchild and your sister's 
niece. 

Licentiousness ! Young man, hear me on this 
point. I want you to determine to say : *^ What- 
ever we are, God help us to be pure. I will take 
no liberties with any woman that God lets me lay 
my eyes upon any more than I would not have 
another man take with my wife, my mother, or my 
sister." 

The doctors of this country have said to many a 
young man : " You can 't be virtuous and be healthy." 
Is there a doctor here that ever said that to a young 
man? If there is I want to look him in the face 
and tell him " You are a liar of the deepest dye." 
My daughter, your daughter, has the same nature 
and the same constitution as your boy, and I dare 
you by all the power in the Bible to walk up to 
my daughter and tell her she can not be virtuous 
and be healthy ! 

Boys, let's be clean. Let's shun this licentious 
river that is sweeping so many to death and degra- 
dation and hell ! 

YI. Intemperance. I am expected to take sides 
everywhere on this moral question, and he who 
would confine the matter of whisky to politics is a 
fool or a rascal. It is not a political question any 
more than "Thou shalt not steal" is a political 
question. It is a question of morals and belongs to 
the Ten Commandments. In Georgia you slip up 
to the ear of the great God and ask him which side 
he is on, and then put me down on the side with 



294 Sermons and Sayings. 

God. When you have asked him, then slip up to 
the side of the suffering Nazarene that gave his 
blood and all for the amelioration of the race and 
for the salvation of men, and say, " Which side are 
you on?" and you need n^t come back to me and 
ask me what side I am on, but just put me down 
on his side. 

Go to the grave of the best wife, the cruelty of 
whose drunken husband broke her heart, and ask 
that wife, " Which side are you on ?" and then put 
me by the side of that precious wife. Then dig 
open that little grave, three feet long, by the mother's 
side, and ask the little angel, ^^What side are you 
on ?" and then put me on the side of the child. If 
I am with God and the angels, and good women 
and children, blessed be God, then I am on the 
right side. 

Blessed be God for the privilege of taking sides 
on moral questions ! I ain't a politician, and you 
could n^t run after me fast enough to give me the 
presidency of the United States. I ask no higher 
honor than to preach righteousness and truth to the 
children of men. 

Let's us quit drinking, boys! A dram cup 
in my hand broke my father's heart! Quit 
drinking, boys! It'll drive the unhealthy roses 
from your cheeks, and they '11 never come back 
again! Quit drinking, boys! 



Skrmon XV. 

" What I have written, I have written." — John xix, 22. 

A TOW, brethren, let us all be prayerful. Let 
1\ every man that believes God hears and an- 
swers prayer, lift his heart continually in prayer to 
God while I try to preach in the name of my 
Master. I want to read to you three or four verses 
in different parts of this book — the Bible. Let us 
give especial attention to them, because they have 
much to do with the discussion that follows : " Re- 
joice, O, young man, in thy youth; let thy heart 
cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk 
in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine 
eyes; but know thou that for all these things God 
will bring thee unto judgment.^' (Ecclesiastes xi, 
9.) " Let us hear the conclusion of the whole 
matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, 
for this is the whole duty of man. " (Ecclesiastes 
xii, 13.) And then we read : " So then every 
one of us shall give account of himself to God." 
(Rom. xiv, 12.) And again we read: "And the 
books were opened, and another book was opened." 
(Rev. XX, 12.) And now we come to the text: 
"What I have written, I have written." (John 
xix, 22. 

There are two "somethings" and one "some 

295 



296 Seemoi^s and Sayings. 

one '^ tlaat I had to do with yesterday. I have to 
do with them to-day. I shall have to do with them 
forever. " Conscience ^^ and '^ record ^^ are the two 
somethings and God is the some one. Conscience — 
Record — God, Conscience and record are like two 
index fingers pointing right up into the face of God, 
and God is the great index finger pointing to the 
final judgment. Conscience is that something run- 
ning through my life approving the right, disap- 
proving the wrong. Conscience when outraged is 
that something that will not let me sleep, no matter 
how soft my pillow. Conscience — that something 
that will not let me eat, no matter how richly laden 
the table. Conscience — that something in me that 
makes me drop my head in guilt and shame before 
the world. Conscience — where is the man in this 
audience who never felt the pangs and pains of an 
outraged conscience? The poet was right when 

he said: 

" What conscience dictates to be done. 
Or warns me not to do, 
This teach me more than hell to shun, 
That more than heaven pursue." 

And I am right in saying upon this occasion that 
the most fearful sin a man ever committed in this 
life, is to sin directly and to sin persistently against 
his own conscience. Do you do that thing which 
conscience says thou oughtest not to do? Do you 
not do that thing which conscience says thou ought- 
est to do? Do you persist in the evil when con- 
science cries: "Stop! hold! murder! murder! 
don^t do it?" Conscience — ah, me, brother! some 
one has said that an outraaced conscience is the worm 



Conscience, Eecoed, God. 297 

that shall never die, and the fire that shall never be 
quenched. 

Where is the man that never outraged his con- 
science ; that never did violence to his conscience ? 
I have more admiration for that poor heathen wo- 
man who, in answer to the dictates of conscience, 
drowns her babe in the Ganges as it flows at her 
feet, than I have for any woman in this building 
who stabs her conscience. I pray you listen ! 
Heaven is the home of conscience. You have felt 
its pangs, you felt them yesterday, you feel them 
to-day, and you may feel them forever. 

Record : A man has a record just as a man has 
a conscience. My record is as much a part of me 
as my conscience or hand is ; my record is as much 
a part of my immortal being as my hand or arm 
of my physical being ; my record is as inseparable 
from that body as this arm is inseparable from my 
physical body. Your record is just as much a part 
of you as your hand is. You can not separate 
them. Do what you will, you can not remove 
them. I was sitting, some years ago, by the side 
of a soldier that had lost his arm up to the elbow, 
in the war. As I sat by his side he pulled up his 
empty sleeve and turned and said, "My, but those 
fingers burn and itch !^^ I says, "What fingers?^' 
" Those fingers on my right hand.'^ I said, " You 
have no right hand.'' He said, " That is true, but 
that whole hand and arm is as much on me in feel- 
ing, although buried on a battle-field in Virginia, 
to-day, as it was before I went to battle.^' 

So your record can not be separated from you. 



298 Seemons and Sayings. 

Every man's record is made up to this hour. Now, 
with the conscience outraged as many are in this 
house, with a record that condemns me, at every 
point in life; with the great God and the judgment 
seat before which I shall appear to give an account 
of my deeds, whether good or bad, is enough to 
bring men to their feet and make them see this in 
the light of eternity. You men who do n't believe 
in hell fire — you men who don't believe in eternal 
punishment, if you can tell me how long a man's 
conscience can live and act, how long the record 
of guilt can live, I will tell you how long hell 
will endure. 

I tell you, my friends, if there is not to be a 
final judgment when man shall be brought to a 
final bar to give an account of all the deeds done 
in the body, if there is to be no judgment here- 
after, there are incidents and feelings and aspira- 
tions and fears and dreads about my being that can 
not be explained in time or eternity. Every bad 
deed of my life, every wayward act of my life, every 
wicked word of my life, have been so many fingers 
pointing me ever and anon to the great day in 
which I shall give an account to God, for the way 
I have lived, for what I have done, and for what 
I have said. 

If you can tell me how long a lie will live, I 
will tell you how long eternal punishment for telling 
a lie will live. If you will tell me how long it 
takes time and eternity to gather back into nothing 
the guilt of butchering your neighbor and bring him 
back to life, I will tell you how long your conscience 



Conscience, Recoed, God. 299 

will be guilty for taking the life blood of your 
neighbor. I am not troubled about how long 
conscience may last, but I am troubled how long 
conscience may lash, for conscience and record go 
before the great white throne. 

An old sheriff down in Georgia, named Zackey, 
was approached by his pastor one day, who said to 
him, " Come out and give your heart to God, and 
prepare for death; you are getting old/^ Mr. 
Zackey said, "I am not afraid to die." And he 
told him the truth. God never made a braver man 
in this world. There was no danger on earth he 
would not face in duty. He would walk up to the 
mouth of a thousand cannon. He never knew 
what the tremor of physical fear was. He looked 
up into his pastor's face and said, ^^ I am not afraid 
to die." " That is true. God never made a braver 
man than you, but how about the judgment bar of 
God ?" And the old man's lips trembled. 

The Judgment, the Judgment. My God, I am 
afraid of the judgment seat of Christ ; may I not 
be afraid to die ! Some people say that the hour 
of death is the honest hour. That is a mistake. 
Many a poor fellow has passed out of this world 
with a smile on his face and gone into eternity to 
be damned forever. I never ask how a man dies ; 
I care nothing about how he dies ; you need not ask 
how I died, but keep the record of my life, and 
then if I live right you may know it. If you live 
right ! I do n't want any evidence ; I only want his 
conscience and record right. You men who have 
rejected ten thousand opportunities, look at your 



300 Sermons and Sayings. 

record to-night, take a survey of the field and the 
conscience in your bosom, looking up to God, and 
bring yourself so close to the throne that it may 
do you good. 

If this Book teaches any thing, it teaches the 
final judgment; if you tell me there is no judg- 
ment, I declare to you in the life of sin I never 
look to my sins that all of them do not point their 
bony fingers toward a final judgment day — a day 
when each man shall give a final account. If I am 
to be responsible to any body on a judgment, then 
there must be a trial — for judgment implies a trial, 
a trial necessitates a time and place for hearing, and 
when I speak of judgment I am not talking to you 
of brimstone, but ten thousand things worse — the 
idea of being banished from God is a thousand 
times worse than hell itself, and a record that makes 
me droop my head for rocks and mountains to hide 
me from the face of God and the Lamb forever. 

Judgment is a forensic term, and means simply 
the equitable adjustment of an issue, but in an 
ecclesiastical sense it means the final adjudication in 
heaven's chancery, when God shall summon men 
and angels alike around his great white throne and 
there sift the issue between himself and all created 
intelligences; and when God once says to you, ^'Ye 
cursed," there never shall be an after jurisdiction. 
The record of my guilt, as the glory of my com- 
mendation, will blaze forever in full view of my 
eyes as my vindication in heaven or my condemna- 
tion in hell. 

Judgment ! Let us strip this subject of all its 



Conscience, Record, God. 301 

mystery. When a man has violated the laws of 
this State there are but three ways by which he 
can hope to escape. One is by force of law, another 
by force of testimony, another by pardon, where the 
governor extends his clemency and pardons the 
criminal. Now I grant you that justice may be 
defeated in many ways. A criminal may violate 
the law of the State and fly from justice, and keep 
out of the way of sheriffs and officers. He may 
bribe the grand jury so that they will not find a 
true bill against him. He may bribe the jury or 
the judge that tries him, but when a man is once 
arraigned before the criminal courts of this country 
there are but three ways by which he can hope to 
escape justice. 

One way is by force of law. When a criminal 
is brought into the court-house, and one witness 
after another is introduced, and they prove his guilt 
beyond reasonable doubt, and when the judge picks 
up the Code of the State and says : " This man is 
guilty, but the law of the State does not make the 
offense a crime,^^ the man is acquitted by force of 
law. There is no law that says his conduct is 
criminal, therefore he is acquitted. 

I might stop here and run off at a tangent, and 
say some things that would burn like fire. I under- 
stand that the jurors of the courts of Cincinnati 
will take a solemn oath on the Bible to render a 
verdict according to the law, and go into the jury- 
room and perjure themselves, and walk out and say 
they do n't believe in the law. If you are one of 
those men, you are a perjurer — a moral leper — ^you 



302 Sermons and Sayings. 

swear to execute the laws of the State of Ohio, and 
try a case under that law, and walk out of your 
jury-room and say, "We don't believe in the law ! " 
You ought to be in the penitentiary yourself, sir. 
And if I was the judge on the bench, I would order 
your arrest, and I would cause the last one of them 
to be prosecuted for perjury and put in the peni- 
tentiary, even the justices as well as the jurors. 
That is the truth about it. 

But if the thing charged in the indictment is a 
crime, then he may be acquitted by force of testi- 
mony. When the jury, after hearing the evidence, 
say : " There is not sufficient evidence to convict, 
and we find the prisoner not guilty,^' then the 
prisoner is acquitted by force of testimony. But if 
he is condemned by law, and condemned by testi- 
mony, then there is but one hope, and that is the 
pardon of the governor. 

Now, up yonder, before that tribunal, there can 
be but three ways by which men can hope to escape. 
You can not dodge God's ministerial officers and 
keep out of their way. You will come to the judg- 
ment! to the judgment! to the judgment! When 
we leave this room some will go this way, some 
that way, but every road you take converges right 
towards the judgment-seat of Christ, and if we 
never see each other's faces again, we shall meet 
at the throne of God at last. I can not dodge God's 
ministerial officers. " Whither shall I go from thy 
spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? 
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I 
make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I 



Conscience, Kecoed, God. 303 

take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the 
uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy 
hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.'^ 
No, sir ! God Almighty will burn this world up 
and bring us to the judgment-seat of Christ. You 
can not dodge the ministerial officers already on 
your track. One of God^s sheriffs put his hand on 
your head one day, and since that it has begun to 
frost. God's sheriff touched your eye one day, and 
you have been wearing spectacles ever since. God's 
sheriff touched your leg, and you are now walking 
with a cane along the streets. Wherever you meet 
men the touch of God's sheriff is upon them, and 
that means simply : 

I have claimed you for my own! 
I will take you by and by. 

And then, again, you can not bribe God's grand 
jury. They have already sat upon your case, and 
the verdict reads : " The soul that sinneth it shall 
die, and he that believeth not shall be condemned." 
I know in this country that a criminal sometimes 
rushes up and defies the court and its authorities, 
but can you defy the court of God that sits upon 
the throne? Shall I rush up in the presence of the 
great God, who in the beginning held a great flam- 
ing mass on the anvil of eternal purpose, and 
pounded it with his own powerful arm, and when 
every spark that flew from it made a world — shall 
I rush up into the presence of such a God as that 
and defy him? ]S"o, sir! Shall I bribe the Judge 
of all the earth? No, sir! But when I shall be 
individualized at that final moment, and shall walk 



304 Sermons and Sayings. 

out into the presence of that great God, I have but 
three ways in which I can hope to escape. 

One is by force of law. Now, hear me ! I 
shake that little bundle of paper (the Bible) in your 
face, and if that little bundle of paper is true, it 
outweighs all this universe. If this book is true, I 
have in my hand a bundle of paper that does not 
weigh ten ounces, and yet it outweighs all the stars 
of the universe. If this little book is true — and we 
have to die whether it is true or not — you and I 
must meet God, and give an account of what we 
have done in the body. 

The law of God. I want to say at this point 
that God will spring no new law upon you up 
yonder. Men say: ^'1 do not like to read that 
Bible, it condemns me." If this law condemns you 
down here to-day, it will condemn you up yonder 
at the judgment to-morrow. You will be the same 
man. This will be the same book. 

"But," says that man, "I have never violated 
many laws in that book." Well, listen: "For 
whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in 
one point, he is guilty of all." 

How do you understand that? Yonder is a boat 
chained to a wharf on your levee. That chain 
has 100 links, but if I want to cut that boat loose, 
how many links must I cut? Fifty of the biggest 
links? Ten of the middle-sized ones? No. I 
need only cut the smallest link, and that boat is as 
effectually loosened as if I had cut them all. And 
he that breaks the least is as guilty as if he had 
broken them all. Suppose I want to go to Kansas 



Conscience, Kecokd, God. 305 

City, There is one right road to that place, and 
1,000 leading in other directions. When I take one 
of the wrong roads I am as effectually out of the 
way as if I had taken every wrong road in the 
universe. And, brother, hear me : God looks not 
upon sin with the least allowance, and can any man 
stand up before the final bar and say ; " I have 
never violated a precept of that book.'^ Until you 
can do that, you can never hope to escape by the 
force of law. 

The law condemns. The apostle tells us that 
"by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be 
justified in his sight.'' The law is but a rule of 
action that prescribes what is right, and prohibits 
what is wrong. And, brother, hear me ! If, in your 
past life you have ever violated a precept in this 
book, you can not hope to escape up yonder by 
force of law on the final judgment day. You are 
compelled to acknowledge: "I am guilty before 
God. I have violated precept after precept. I have 
not only done it repeatedly, but I have done it 
knowingly and willfully. I can not hope to be ac- 
quitted by force of law." 

Then I say to you, how about the force of testi- 
mony ? Now we have come directly to the text : 
" What I have written I have written." I just 
quoted before that: " So, then, every one of us shall 
give an account of himself to God." Know thou 
that for all these things you shall be brought unto 
judgment, whether these things be good or bad. 
Now we stand there before his final throne. " What 
I have written I have written." 

26 



306 Sermons and Sayings. 

I declare to you this eveniog that it is my belief 
and it is founded on Scripture, that every man and 
every boy of us is now writing testimony by which 
we shall stand or fall on the last judgment day. 
Greenleaf on Evidence tells us that the best evidence 
a case is susceptible of shall be produced, fte tells 
us again that written testimony is better than oral 
testimony. He tells us again that the evidence pro- 
duced must correspond with the allegation, and be 
confined to the point at issue. Now, brother, here 
is the best testimony (the Bible), and every word 
of it in God's own handwriting. Written testimony 
is better than oral testimony. Lumpkin, one of the 
grandest jurists that ever sat upon the Supreme 
bench of Georgia, said : " I would rather trust the 
smallest slip of paper than the best memory man 
was ever gifted with.'' Here is written testimony : 
Start an engine from New York to San Francisco, 
and there is attached to its side a little piece of 
mechanism which indicates the number of miles it 
has traveled, the stoppages it has made, and how 
long it stopped at each station, and if you want to 
know the record of the journey you need not ask 
the engineer a word. The little piece of mechanism 
on the side of the engine tells you its record. You 
go to the city of New York, and you see the Fifth 
Avenue Hotel with its 700 rooms. You see that it 
is lighted up day after day and night after night, 
some rooms burning 100 jets, some ten, some one. 
You step to the proprietor and say, ^^ How can you 
keep an account of this gas? How do you know 
how much you burn?" and he says, "Come with 



Conscience, Record, Gob. 307 

me." You walk with him down underneath a 
double stairway. He strikes a match and lights a 
candle and holds it to the dial plate of the gas-meter. 
He says, ^' You see that finger trembling on the face 
of the dial? That indicates to the one-hundreth 
part of an inch how much gas has passed through 
this meter during the past three months. There is 
a record for you.'' And every man and every boy 
this evening can stand up and face this fact. " What 
I have written I have written." 

Ah, me! the record of some men, the record of 
some boys who hear my voice this moment ! If your 
wife could read your record just as you have written 
it down, she would spurn you from her presence and 
drive you ever from her home. There are boys 
listening to my voice whose mothers would drive 
them from their presence if they could read the last 
night's record of those boys. O, the record ! Boys, 
every oath, every wicked deed, every midnight 
carousal, every debauched act of your life, is writ- 
ten in legible indelible letters, and shall sparkle for- 
ever on the tablets of your hearts. 

O, me ! Men sometimes say it makes no differ- 
ence. Brother, it makes no difference whether you 
approached this hall in this or that spirit, but it 
makes an eternal difference whether you did right 
or wrong on your way here. 

Record! Record! We sometimes say "as 
true as the Bible," but every record, every line on 
the tablet of your heart is just as true as the Bible 
is true. It is a secret record. God would not 
suffer an angel of heaven to touch that record. God 



308 Seemons and Sayings. 

would not suffer the worst enemy in the world to 
touch that record of yours. God would not suffer 
your precious mother to put her finger on that 
record. It is a secret record of the soul by which 
it shall stand or fall at the judgment-seat of Christ. 
True ! true ! Holy Spirit, shine on our record this 
evening ! Let us read it now in thirty seconds — a 
record of accumulated guilt that will drive us to 
some power to save, some power to relieve. 

Record ! Record ! Record ! What is your record 
as a Presbyterian? On one side of your record I 
see recorded vows of eternal constancy to God. On 
that page I see " I swear eternal allegiance to God 
and the right.^' Brother, what is your record from 
that day to this ? Brother Methodists, with vows 
upon you that would almost crush an angel, how 
have you lived since you knowingly and intention- 
ally made these vows to God? Ministers of the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ, what is your record since 
the day God called you into his work, and you 
promised to be faithful to God and to man? O 
Holy Spirit, shine on these records here this even- 
ing. Let us see what we must meet at the final 
bar of God. I want to say to you that I would 
frequently preach very differently but for record- 
making. I want to say to this vast assemblage of 
fathers, husbands, and sons here this evening, that 
while I preach *the Gospel to others, I never forget 
for a moment that I have a soul in my own body 
that will be saved or lost. God pity us here this 
evening, and turn our eyes inward, to see these 
records as God would have us see them. 



Conscience, Recokd, God. 309 

What is your record, husband? What is your 
record, father? What is your record, son? There 
are hundreds of men here this evening, and the only 
reason you can hold up your heads, the only reason 
you can move among your fellows, is the conscious- 
ness that nobody on earth can read your record. It 
is hidden out of the sight of man. There are men 
listening to me now, who, if I could tear a page of 
the record from their heart and stick it there on that 
wall in legible letters, would shrink from this con- 
gregation, rush out of this hall and out of this town 
and never be seen within its radius again. O, 
brother, it is hidden now, but God^s Word for it, 
every wicked act, every secret sin, shall be 
proclaimed from the house tops. Oh, fearful 
thought ! Record ! It was this that made the poet 

say: 

" It is not all of life to live, 
Nor all of death to die." 

I know that you may drown out this record in a 
night's spree, but it comes back with all its power 
to condemn in the morning. I know that in the 
giddy round of pleasure you may drown its voice 
for the hour, but ever and anon it shakes, it shakes 
its horny hand in your face, and says : " Look ! 
Read the record of yesterday, of last week, of last 
year.'' 

" What I have written I have written." What 
have you written upon the record of your life? What 
upon yours? And upon yours? I stand here to 
condemn no man. I ask you, my brother, in all 
love and kindness, what is the record you have 



310 Sermons akd Sayings. 

made to this hour? Some months ago a lady 
slipped a pedometer into her husband^s pocket as 
he went out in the evening. He was a business 
man in the city, but every night as he left the sup- 
per table he said : " I have to go down to the store.'' 
On one occasion she put one of these indicators in 
his pocket, and when he came back she took it out 
and consulted it. The faithful little dial told her 
that her husband had walked seventeen miles that 
night. And she said to him : ^^ Husband, where 
have you been to-night?'' He replied: ^^ I have 
been posting my books." She said : " Husband, 
that won't do. Do you post your books as you 
walk ? " " No," he said, " I post my books sitting 
at my desk." She pulled the little indicator out 
and put it in his face and said, " There is the record 
of your work ! Seventeen miles to-night. It is 
half a mile to the store, and half a mile back. Ex- 
plain yourself." She made him explain, and it 
turned out that he had walked sixteen miles round 
a billiard table playing pool. And I tell you, 
my congregation, that within your bosom there 
Is a faithful record being kept every day, and when 
at last God shall say, " Who art thou and what 
hast thou done?" the record has passed into the 
recording angel's hands, and he shall read line after 
line and page after page of guilt that is enough to 
damn the universe. 

Record ! record ! Every oath has been recorded. 
Every wicked act has been recorded. Every un- 
faithful act has been recorded up yonder ! O, my 
brother, how about your record? And I have 



Conscience, Record, God. 311 

found out another thing: Men talk one way with 
their tongue and write another way upon the record 
of their heart. A man stands up there and says : 
"I do not believe in God.^^ Then he writes down 
upon the tablet of his heart: ^'I have just told a lie. 
I do. I do." A man out there says : " I do not 
see any use in revivals. I am as good as any body 
in the Church." Then he takes up his pen and 
writes within : " I have told one of the biggest lies 
I ever told. There is a big use in revivals. The 
world is going to destruction, and I am the meanest 
man in town." He writes one way and talks another. 
Brethren, I will know you by and by just as you 
are. 

Record ! record ! There are men who hear my 
voice to-day who, if their record were to close with 
this hour, have sinned enough to damn the uni- 
verse, and I beg you never to add another line to 
that accumulating record of guilt, which is enough 
to make the devil, when he looks at it, hide his 
black face under his wings ! God pity us ! May 
the pen drop from our palsied hands ! May we 
never indite another line that may condemn us here 
or at the judgment bar of God. 

"What I have written I have written." And I 
want to tell you that when once you put it down, it 
is down forever. The autobiographies we write on 
paper can be altered and underlined, but the auto- 
biography you have written on the tablet of your 
heart can never be altered or erased. It goes down 
as it is. It abides with you for ever. 

Record ! record ! record ! At the age of 24 I was 



312 Sermons and Sayings. 

brought face to face with the fact that I had a 
record sufficient to damn the universe. Brother, let 
me turn to Spencer; let me read him through and 
through, and having done so, I say to Mr. Spencer: 
" I have been charmed with your theory, but how 
about my conscience, my record, my God?'' Mr. 
Spencer says : ^^ I do not treat on those subjects." 
I say : " Of all subjects, I am the most in need of 
these.'' Then I turn to Brother Darwin, and after 
reading his evolution theories, I say : " But how 
about my conscience, my record, my God?" He 
says : ^^ I do not treat on those subjects." I go to 
Mr. Tyndall and all earthly philosophers and scien- 
tists just at the time I need help and enlighten- 
ment, but they turn their backs on me and walk 
off. Now, with record enough to damn the uni- 
verse, I stand with no philosopher to help me, and 
no scientist that can reach me. Brother, hear me ! 
All the tears of my precious mother could never 
have erased one single line of this record. All the 
prayers of my father would have been wasted on 
this record. All the prayers of the Church would 
avail nothing. All the combined chemicals of earth 
could not have erased one single word of it. O, 
what shall I do? 

And now, brother, I will tell you why I hang 
my highest hope of salvation on this blessed Gos- 
pel. When every other source had failed me, I 
took this book in my hands, and I sought the cross 
of Jesus Christ, and there, a poor, guilty, wicked 
wretch, I fell down under the cross. And the 
precious Saviour picked me up and pardoned all 



Conscience, Record, God. 813 

my sins. He blotted out this record of mine, and 
he took my arms and put them around the neck 
of God. And I love this religion and this Bible, 
because it proposes to do with conscience and with 
record and with God. And there is no other sys- 
tem in the moral universe that proposes to lead a 
poor man in these dreadful extremities. Aye, with 
record enough to condemn all men, I went to the 
cross. And now I understand that blessed old 
hymn: 

" There is a fountain filled with blood, 
Drawn from Immanuel's veins." 

Bless God for that precious blood that saves a 
poor, lost, ruined sinner! I want to say to you 
to-day that my hope of heaven rests on this point. 
Fourteen years ago a poor, wrecked, ruined sinner, 
his blood washed away my guilt, and now my 
record has been washed out in the precious blood 
of the Son of God. Now take heed to the judg- 
ment. Charge me with Sabbath-breaking, charge 
me with infidelity, charge me with every thing, 
but there is the record, and the precious blood has 
washed out every page and every line, and I stand 
acquitted on the final judgment day by the force of 
testimony and the prerogative of pardon. Blessed 
be God! Acquitted on the final judgment day! 
Brother, brother, the hope of the world is the cross 
of the Son of God. Let us rush up under that 
cross, the lost, the wicked, and the wayward. Four- 
teen years ago I was the worst of the worst, and 
sometimes I think that God suffered me, in spite of 
my mother's prayers and my father's example, to 

27 



314 Sermons and Sayings. 

go down to the gates of hell, that I might be sent 
back again to bring back the men closest to the 
gates of hell. God help you all ! I care not who 
you are, he will not only pardon your sins, but he 
will separate them as far as the east is from the 
west. He says : " I will blot them out of the 
book of my remembrance.^' 

O, brethren, let us turn our eyes to the hope of 
the world. This evening let us, on God's own 
terms of capitulation, run the white flag out of the 
citadel of our hearts, and God will tell the angels 
to get their wings and fly down to earth and con- 
vey peace and hope to every rebellious heart. 



SAYINOS. 

How TO Kill Loving Parents. — There is a 
way to kill a mother without any weapon. The 
father of a lot of drunken sons said to me : 
'^ Jones, my boys are killing their mother, my 
precious wife. What can I do ? What would you 
do ? It does n't look as if their mother will live 
twelvemonths longer." "Well," said I, "I don't 
know, brother, I declare ! You puzzle me with 
that question, but I '11 say this much : If I ever 
raise boys at my house that are drunken de- 
bauchees, and they turn out to be drunken vaga- 
bonds, and just crush their mother's heart, some 
morning after they wake up sober, I 'm going to 
call them into their room and say : ^ Boys, you are 
killing your precious mother by the inch. She is 



Conscience, Recoed, God. 316 

dying a hundred deaths ! Boys, listen at me : Go 
up in your room and get the old, breech-loading 
shotgun, and put forty buckshot into each barrel, 
and walk down to the breakfast-table this morning, 
and put it to your mother's head and fire both 
barrels off. You shan't kill my precious wife by 
inches. You may bring your shotgun and shoot 
her down, but you shan't kill her by inches that 
way, boys.' " O, me ! There 's many a precious 
woman in this town that's dying by the inch, and 
you can run home to-night and put your ear to 
your wife's heart, and hear the blood drip! drip! 
drip! May God have mercy upon us. 

The Haedest Thing. — The hardest thing a 
poor fellow ever tried to do in this world is to give 
himself to God just as he is. He wants to fix 
up and brush up and arrange the matter. O how 
we do hate to turn just such a case over to God! 
We would like to make him about half-way what 
we want him to be before we turn him over. It is 
the hardest job a man ever undertook to turn 
himself over to God just as he is. 



Sermon XVI. 

THE) PRODIOAL'S RETURN. 
3t ^svtnon to ^sn* 

"I will arise and go to my father."— Luke xv, 18. 

AS a congregation of fathers, husbands, and sons 
we will be together no more this side of the 
great day when we shall all stand before the great 
throne, and give an account each for himself. 
Brethren, give us your prayers and your attention, 
and I trust this service may bring a tide of love 
that shall sweep you all over the perilous bar into 
the great Kingdom of God. We shall read this 
afternoon, and make a running comment on, the 
Parable of the Prodigal Son : "And he said, A cer- 
tain man had two sons ; and the younger of them 
said to his father, Father, give me the portion of 
goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto 
them his living. And not many days after the 
younger son gathered all together and took his 
journey into a far country, and there wasted his 
substance with riotous living. And when he had 
spent all there arose a mighty famine in that land, 
and he began to be in want. And he went and 
joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he 
sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he 
would fain have filled his belly with the husks that 
the swine did eat; and no man gave unto him. 
And when he came to himself he said : How many 
316 



The Prodigal's Keturn. 317 

hired servants of my father's have bread enough 
and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will 
arise and go to my father, and will say unto him: 
Father, I have sinned against heaven and before 
thee; and am no more worthy to be called thy 
son; make me as one of thy hired servants. And 
he arose and came to his father. But when he was 
yet a great way off his father saw him, and had 
compassion, and ran and fell on his neck, and kissed 
him. And the son said unto him : Father, I have 
sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am no 
more worthy to be called thy son. But the father 
said to his servants : Bring forth the best robe 
and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and 
shoes on his feet. And bring hither the fatted calf, 
and kill it, and let us eat and be merry. For this, 
my son, was dead, and is alive again ; he was lost, 
and is found. And they began to be merry. Now, 
his elder son was in the field, and as he came and 
drew nigh to the house he heard music and danc- 
ing. And he called one of the servants, and asked 
what these things meant. And he said unto him : 
Thy brother is come, and thy father hath killed 
the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe 
and sound. And he was angry, and would not go 
in ; therefore came his father out and entreated him. 
And he, answering^ said to his father: Lo, these 
many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I 
at any time thy commandment; and yet thou never 
gavest me a kid that I might make merry with my 
friends; but as soon as this, thy son, was come, 
which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou 



318 Sekmons and Sayings. 

hast killed for him the fatted calf And he said 
unto him : Son, thou art ever with me, and all 
that I have is thine. It was meet that we should 
make merry, and be glad ; for this, thy brother, was 
dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is 
found."— Luke xv, 11-32. 

I never feel I am any kin, to this older brother. 
Eeally, I don't know who he is. I don't know 
what place God intends he shall fill in the vast 
moral universe. This much I know; we live in a 
fallen world. There are unfallen worlds. I reckon 
the inhabitants of these worlds ought to have kept 
their first estate, and they would not have had to 
cry out when God threw his arms around a wan- 
dering, wayward man that has spent his all with 
harlots. I suppose the unfallen world looks on 
with astonishment and wonder, and they wonder 
why it is God should be so good to this fallen world 
when they never transgressed. Brethren, there is a 
moral universe all around us. This young man, the 
older of the two, occupies some place in that moral 
universe. I hope, I trust, I believe, that there is 
such a thing as mercy to cover his case. We will 
leave him in the hands of God while we discuss the 
other brother this evening — the one that is kin to 
us; the one we have known all our life. If this 
prodigal boy were not my brother I should never 
think I am a man myself. 

Let us take the parable just as it presents itself 
to us, and we will modernize it so that we can get 
hold of it and see it plainly; for this is one of the 
most perfect pictures of human nature the world 



The Peodigal's Retuen. 319 

ever looked upon. This parabolic illustration of a 
tiling is but the photograph, the portrait of it ; and 
here is one of the finest portraits of humanity that 
inspiration ever drew, for it is so lifelike — so like 
me, so like you, and so like every man of us. O, 
what a picture of human nature ! 

If Christ had never said another word but this 
I would have always looked upon the author of 
this parable as divine, for it stamps him as a divine 
person. "A certain man/^ he said, ^^ had two sons, 
and the younger of them said to his father, ^ Father, 
give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.' 
And he divided unto them his living.^^ I have 
heard preachers say some mighty hard things about 
this boy ; they said he was wicked, dissipated, and 
wild and profligate at home; that he was the worry 
of his father's heart, and gave his mother so much 
trouble. I do n't know where they got that idea of 
this prodigal boy; they didn't get it out of the 
Bible, sure. Look here now : if that young fellow 
was prodigal and wild, and dissipated and wasteful, 
and his father divided with him his living, his 
father was a fool to start with. We will put it in 
that shape. This younger brother (according to the 
laws in those days, the older brother inherited the 
estate, and the younger brother had no legal claim 
on his father), this younger brother comes to his 
father and says : " Father, give me the portion of 
goods that falleth to me," and he immediately 
divided his living. Without a word of remon- 
strance or hesitancy or advice he turns over to this 
young fellow this great amount of property. The 



320 Seemons and Sayings. 

face of the parable shows that, up to that hour, the 
youDg man was praiseworthy, upright, industrious, 
and worthy of the confidence of his father, so far as 
all outward manifestations of his conduct were con- 
cerned. 

I repeat it : A man that has sense enough to 
accumulate a fortune, or sense enough to take care 
of an inherited fortune, is too wise to turn over a 
vast amount of property, without a word of remon- 
strance or advice, to a wayward, dissipated, profli- 
gate^boy. He would nH do that — no father would — 
and the very face of the parable shows that this 
boy, so far as his father knew, was trustworthy. I 
have always felt sorry for this boy when I saw the 
preachers jump on him, and stamp on him, and beat 
and kick him. I have ! I feel sorry for many a 
poor sinner, too. I would n't touch a hair of your 
head, brother, if I could get the meanness out of 
you without doing it ; and every stamp and kick 
and jerk I make at you is to jerk and stamp and 
kick the meanness out of you. 

If I could go through this country with Mrs. 
Winslow's Soothing Syrup and get more souls to 
Christ by having the sinners each take a teaspoon- 
ful, I would invest every nickel I have in that 
syrup. I would that ! I am for the efficient thing, 
for that which will make you cease to do evil and 
learn to do right. That's all I have against you. 
I have n't any thing else against you, for I love you 
all as if you were my own brothers ; but, O, how it 
makes me feel bad and sad to see the way you do ! 
It hurts me on your account, and on your wife's 



The Peodigal's Retuen. 321 

account, and on your children's account, and on ac- 
count of humanity. I am your brother, and when you 
suffer I suffer; when you rejoice I rejoice. I am 
happy at every happy man I meet; I am sad at every 
dejected, sorrowful, sinful character I meet. I weep 
with those who weep, and I rejoice with those who 
rejoice. O Lord, lift us up here in Cincinnati, to 
where we can rejoice with those that rejoice and 
where there will be none to weep with and mourn 
with, and none to feel sad over ! 

Letfs catch up the thought of this parable, and 
find our way back to God. " A certain man had two 
sons. And the younger of them said to his father, 
Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth 
to me. And he divided unto them his living. And 
not many days after the younger son gathered all 
together and took his journey into a far country.^' 
We may imagine this father divided his portion to 
the younger son, and the young man then spent a 
whole week in getting every thing in order for 
the journey. 

We may say that his property consisted of cam- 
els, and sheep, and horses, and servants; and now 
he has spent the week in gathering all together; 
and we will say when Saturday night comes all the 
plans have been made, all arrangements have been 
perfected, and on Monday morning, bright and 
early, this grand pageant, this vast caravan, drives 
out in front of the old homestead, and the young 
man calls a halt to all movement, and stops, and 
hushes every thing into silence ; and he walks back 
up through the front gate, and up the avenue on to 



322 Sermons and Sayings. 

the porch of the old homestead, and he takes his 
father's hands, and says : ^^ Good-bye, father V^ and 
we can see that father look upon him with eyes of 
love and mercy, and say : " Good-bye, boy V^ and 
the tears course down his cheek; and then the boy 
turns to his mother to bid her good-bye, and the 
mother instinctively throws her arms about her boy, 
and says : '' Good-bye, son V' and then she imprints 
a thousand kisses on his face, and she says to him: 
" Son, remember the instructions of your youth.'' 
The young fellow then deliberately turns his back 
on father and mother and home, and walks out of 
the front gate and bids the caravan move off, and 
they move off in grand style. It is a wonderful 
pageant, and mother and father linger on the front 
veranda and watch the procession as it passes out 
of sight and gradually winds its way over the brow 
of the hill and disappears from view. The father 
turns around and utters an earnest prayer, "God, 
look after my boy;" and the mother, with the tears 
running down her cheeks, says, "O, shall I ever 
see my boy again !" 

On the boy moves with his caravan, and I 
imagine about sundown he drives out on a beautiful 
camping ground, pitches his tents, and arranges 
every thing for the coming of the night; and now 
I can see every thing in order, and every thing has 
been cared for, and now I see the young man as he 
unfolds his coat, spreads it out and lays himself 
down for the night's rest, and turns his eye to the 
heavens above him, and he begins to think, " This 
is the first night I have ever spent from my home. 



The Peodigal's Return. 323 

This the first night I have ever slept from beneath 
the roof of the old homestead. This is the first 
night I have been where I could not hear mother's 
voice, and could not hear father's advice.'' 

I have wished many a time that that boy, before 
he went to sleep that first night, had settled it in his 
mind, " This is my first night from home, and by 
the grace of God it shall be my last, for to-morrow 
morning, when I arise I shall turn this caravan 
around, and will drive back to the old homestead." 
O, if he had settled that, how many hours of heart- 
ache, and anguish, and desolation and misery that 
boy would have avoided ? O, poor, miserable, 
wandering boy, I've thought a thousand times of 
you, and wished you had turned around and gone 
back. 

We see him next morning with renewed vigor 
rising early, and after a simple breakfast drives on 
and on, and the next evening the same scene is 
re-enacted. He goes to bed, and I think, ^'Well, 
young fellow, you see now this is your second night 
out. You ' re on your journey, two days away 
from home;" and I wish that night the boy had 
settled it in his mind, " This is my second night 
from home, and by the grace of God to-morrow 
night shall be my last. I will turn my face on 
my journey and will go back, and in two days I'll 
reach the old homestead." That boy would have 
been away from home only four days if he had done 
that. But on and on and on he drives, each night 
repeating the same scene; and at the end of the 
sixth day, Saturday night, he picks him out a 



324 Seemons and Sayings. 

pleasant camping-ground on which to remain over 
Sunday. 

A boy never gets his own consent to break the 
Sabbath the first week he is away from home. 
The boy says, " I ^11 tie up here, and rest. It is 
father's Sabbath and mother's Sabbath, and I will 
reverence this day.'' The boy was only a week 
from home then, you see, and he could n't aiford 
to break the Sabbath. He winds up his first 
week on Saturday night, and he goes to bed, 
and as he lies there looking up at the bright, cold 
stars in the heavens he says, " I am six days' journey 
from home." The next morning is the Sabbath, 
and the sun rises gloriously and bathes the scene in 
a sea of light, and as he looks around on that beau- 
tiful Sabbath day he has the consciousness, " This 
is the first Sabbath I ever spent from home; this 
is the first Sabbath sun that ever rose on me when 
away from my father's house." 

I wish he had settled it that morning, and said, 
" By the grace of God as this is my first Sunday from 
home, it shall be my last Sunday from home." I 've 
wished a thousand times this wayward boy had 
turned his train around the next morning, and 
driven back to the old homestead. If he had, he would 
have been out just one Sabbath from home, and the 
next Sunday would have found him sitting by his 
mother's side, listening to her sweet voice, and by 
his father's side, listening to his words of counsel. O, 
if he had settled the thing that way, how many weeks 
of hardship he would have shunned, and how many 
hours and days of misery he would have avoided ! 



The Peodigal^s Retuen. 325 

Monday morning finds him driving on and on, 
and I imagine that at the end of his second week^s 
journey he drove into a magnificent, fertile coun- 
try, and as he looked at the beautiful land and sur- 
veyed the situation, he said : ^^ I believe this would 
be a good place to settle. I believe I will buy in 
this locality and settle down;" but something sug- 
gested to him the thought : " Well, if you buy here 
and settle down, you won ^t get more than settled 
before the old lady '11 come down here on a visit 
with the old man, and they '11 want to break in on 
your arrangements and advise you how to run 
things, and they '11 meddle with your affairs ; and if 
you 're going to make out for yourself and create a 
name for yourself and build you up a fortune, the 
best thing for you to do is to pick up and get to 
where they won't visit you." 

The fact is, the purpose of the boy's mind was 
this : he had been watching his father, and saw his 
old fogy notions and way of doing things, and he 
thought many a time, ^' If the old man would turn 
this thing over to me, I'd manage the thing better 
than he does." Yes, and some of you fathers who 
turned things over to your boys — where are you now? 
If you don 't mind your boys, some of you, they '11 
ruin you! You can't afford to turn over to your 
son his part of the estate, and you must n't let your 
boys bankrupt your wife, their mother, and his 
sisters. Well, the boy watched the old man until 
he thought the old man was stupid, and he thought 
his old fogy notions would n't do, and his idea was, 
" If father will turn his estate over to me, I will be 



326 Sermons and Sayings. 

able to double, and triple, and quadruple it in value 
in less than ten years. My idea is to buy a mag- 
nificent plantation, stock it well with fine stock, 
build me a palatial residence, and arrange every 
thing in first-class order, and when I get to count- 
ing the money, then I won't mind a visit from the 
old folks. But I'll want to have matters all ar- 
ranged before they begin to meddle and interfere.'' 

Well, the prodigal boy drives on and on, and at 
the end of the third week he drives into another 
beautiful locality, and I imagine he says, " This 
suits me. This is magnificent ground here. I like 
this soil and climate. I like this altitude. I '11 buy 
here." Then he begins to think, '^ Why there 's a 
post-office in the settlement over yonder, and I won't 
be here three weeks before I '11 get a long letter 
from father full of advice, and I '11 get a long sen- 
timental letter from mother, and they '11 be doing 
nothing but advising and suggesting. The fact of 
the business is, if I 'd wanted their advice I 'd have 
stayed at home. I do n't want to be meddled with 
and interfered with. I 'm a whale, and if there 's 
any thing bigger than that, I'm that!" Boys, 
have n't you often felt that way ? Have n't you 
felt it crawling up your sleeve and running all over 
you, and you thought you were bigger than your 
father ? 

" Into a far-off country," and on he drove. I 
want to say another thing here. The boy 's moving 
off in style ; he 's got plenty of money ; he 's no 
poor man ; he 's able to pay his way. I imagine 
him moving on with his great train of servants and 



The Peodigal's Retuen. 327 

stock, until at last he pulls up before a beautiful 
country place, and he says, " I guess I '11 sleep in a 
mansion to-night. I'll tie up at this good man's 
house on the wayside here." Next morning, when 
the time comes for him to depart, he turns to the 
good man, and says, " What 's your bill, old fellow ? " 
The old man says, " Why, it 's nothing. I 'm glad 
to have had you stay with me. I won't charge you 
a cent." The young fellow swells up, and he says, 
"You can't insult me, old man. I've got plenty 
of money. I'm no pauper in this country. I don't 
want to be insulted by having any man treat me 
like a pauper. Name your amount." That's the 
way ! You 've been there, have n't you, boys ? 

I '11 tell you another thing ; whenever you strike 
one of these I'm-no-pauper fellows, if you '11 put 
your dogs on his track they '11 tree him at a hog- 
pen ! There 's many a boy in this hall this even- 
ing that 's headed for the hog-pen ; and you '11 never 
turn until you get there either, and some of you 
never ! "Able to pay my way ! " I imagine when 
his money did get scarce he sold some of his stock 
and still had plenty of money. 

On and on the prodigal boy drove, and when he 
had reached a far-off country — then what? He 
bought him a hundred thousand acres of the most 
fertile land in the settlement ; he built him a pala- 
tial residence and stocked his farm, and he was a 
prince in the land! I've seen many a boy that 
thought he was a prince. But when he reached 
that far-off country, what did he do? He spent 
all — not part of it — in riotous living! Listen^ 



328 Seemons and Sayings. 

again. When he had spent all there arose a mighty 
famine in the land. Did you ever notice, brother, 
when you ^re out of money it seems as if every body 
else is out too ? Didn't you notice when you did n't 
have a thing in the world you could n't get a man 
to be your friend? Did you ever notice when 
a man had spent his all there was a famine to him, 
no matter what there was to other people? Ever 
think of that, boys? O, how true that is! There 
is a family down town here ; they have n't a dollar 
in the world, and there 's a famine right here in 
Cincinnati for them. Every grocery in town is 
loaded down with flour, and meat, and all kind of 
eatables, but there's a famine in their home. And 
it was when they had spent all that there arose a 
mighty famine in this land. 

Now, brother, when you get to this point where 
you see the famine, where you see how this young 
man ended, we '11 leave the young man there, and 
let 's you and I go back and come down round this 
line! Brother, here's human nature; let's see 
what there is in this for us. Let 's see what 's in 
this life-like picture. When you were ten — and 
you were twelve — and you were fourteen— and you 
yonder sixteen, you were spotless boys, as pure as 
snow. You looked up to your father's God, and 
said, ^^ Give me the spiritual portion that falleth to 
me," and God turned over to you your mother's 
prayers and your father's advice and Gospel in- 
fluences, and the precious Bible given you by 
your mother, and all good influences God turned 
over to you, and then you started into a far-oflf 



The Prodigal's Return. 329 

country. Do you know that a man can live in the 
same house with his mother, and sleep in the next 
room to his mother, and yet be in a far-off country 
from his mother ! Do you know that ? Do you 
know that a man may be in the world with God 
and yet be away from God? Do you know that? 
O, young man, I'm so glad that the purity of your 
mother and the sanctity of your home make you a 
great distance from it. I am so glad there 's a place 
of purity for poor disconsolate ones on earth to re- 
sort to occasionally. 

Young man, listen ! You started out with your 
spiritual heritage ; you went on spending your sub- 
stance ; you threw away your father's advice, your 
mother's prayers. O, mother's prayers, how much 
they are worth! You threw away the Gospel in- 
fluences of your younger days. You threw away all 
that was good. You have been scattering, scatter- 
ing ! scattering it along the way, and there you sit 
to-day, and you have n't a vestige of your spirit- 
ual heritage left you. All gone ! All gone ! 

"And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty 
famine in that land." O, boy, with the world full 
of Bibles, you have n't one ! With other mothers 
praying, your mother has gone from you forever! 
With other fathers advising their children, your 
father has ceased to speak, and his lips are closed 
and cold in death ! O, how desolate is he who has 
spent his all in riotous living! 

I was preaching once, and, after preaching, I 
said, " If there is a man in this house that feels in 
his heart * I have n't a thing left, I have n't a friend 
* 28 



330 Sermons and Sayings. 

left in the world/ come up and give me your hand/' 
and immediately one poor disconsolate fellow arose 
and walked up the aisle and took me by the hand, 
and with a face that spoke more than words could, 
he said : " Mr. Jones, I have n't a friend in the 
world. I haven't any thing left on earth. It is 
all gone, all gone." O, brethren, there was a mighty 
famine in that man's land. O, what a thought! O, 
what a thought ! He had wasted all ! Boys, where 
is the Bible mother gave you ? Where 's the sweet 
lullaby of your cradle ? Fathers, where are the ser- 
mons that touched your hearts in your younger days ? 
Men of the world, where are the good influences 
that should have made you happy Christians? All 
gone ! All wasted in riotous living ! 

"And when he had spent all there arose a mighty 
famine in that land." My presiding elder told me 
this incident once : " In my district, some time ago, 
I was driving along the road, and I reached a coun- 
try cross-roads grocery, and, as I drove along in 
front, a poor, desolate, trembling man walked out 
of the grocery and accosted me, and said : * You 
do n't recognize me, but I know you. We were 
college mates, and graduated in the same college 
class, twenty years ago. We joined Church at the 
same time, but when I came out of college I got 
into bad company, and I have been going from bad 
to worse ever since. I Ve been on a spree, drinking 
hard, and just now, when I went in that grocery, 
desolate and moneyless, the barkeeper said he would 
give me a drink for nothing, and I took hold of the 
bottle, but my nerves were so unsteady I couldn't 



The Prodigal's Eeturn. 331 

pour the whisky out, and the grocery keeper poured 
it out for me, and as I took the glass and raised it 
to my lips I felt my old mother's hand come down 
on my head, and she said : 

" ' Now I lay me down to sleep, 
I pray the Lord my soul to keep ; 
If I should die before I awake, 
I pray the Lord my soul to take/ 

" ^ My precious old mother had been in heaven 
twenty years, but I felt her hand just as I did in 
days gone by, and as she spoke to me I dropped 
the glass, and I walked out and met you.' " The 
presiding elder said that, when he passed on (so he 
was told afterwards), that fellow walked back into 
the store and drank the stuff, and he was carried 
out a corpse. That poor mother followed her boy 
to the very gates of hell, and had her hand on his 
head as he foundered on the rocks of hell and 
sank forever. 

O, my, how a man can squander all and spend 
all in riotous living ! "And when he had spent all," 
the parable says, " there arose a mighty famine in 
that land." And the next thing he did he joined 
himself to a citizen of that country ; and when he 
joined himself to a citizen of that country that citi- 
zen put him into the field to feed swine. Recollect, 
this is a Jew ; this young man was a Jew. What 
more disreputable work could a Jew be put at than 
feeding hogs? He put him into the field to feed 
swine. 

Look here, brother, when a man disposes of all ; 
when mother's prayers, father's advice, the Bible, 



332 Seemons and Sayings. 

all good influences are disposed of, the next thing a 
man is going to do after he has disposed of all is to 
join himself to a citizen of this country, the devil, 
and the devil puts him to work — puts him to blas- 
pheming the God of his mother, violating the 
Sabbath of his mother; puts him to drenching his 
body with liquid fluid, which is but the essence of 
damnation. Now, here I have said before that God 
wants humanity to help him bring the world to 
Christ ; the devil wants humanity to help him damn 
the race ; and whenever a man joins himself to the 
devil, the devil puts him at the work of damning 
humanity; and every wholesale liquor house, and 
every brewery, and every saloon, and every still- 
house in Ohio is an agent of the devil, doing his 
work. 

"And he joined himself to a citizen of that coun- 
try," and the devil put him to stilling whisky, and 
the devil put him to running a brewery, and the 
devil put him to opening a saloon, and the devil 
put him to the work of damning humanity, and 
that is the only work of every servant of the devil, 
damning humanity. 

I go to the Legislature of Ohio. I say, " Gen- 
tlemen of the Legislature, I want you to make the 
sale of liquor in the State of Chio free, and with 
the freedom to sell it I demand the privilege 
of debauching the children of your wives, and 
cursing your homes.'' And I will tell you an- 
other thing: The Legislature of Chio, if they 
were asked by the bar-keepers of Cincinnati the 
privilege of damning their own children, and break- 



The Peodigal's Retuen. 333 

ing the hearts of the wives of the members of that 
Legislature — what do you think the legislators would 
say to that? I tell you it has reached the point in 
this country where the legislature of many States — 
and if this does n^t fit Ohio they need not wear it ; 
and if it does, I beg them to throw it away and get 
them a better cap — it has come to a point in many 
States of the Union where, instead of the legislature 
controlling the liquor interest, it is the liquor inter- 
est that is controlling the legislature. An old swill- 
tub in the House of Representatives making laws 
for decent people ! 

From a governor down to a dog-pelter, I would 
not vote for a man that touches, tastes, or handles 
whisky to save my life ; and you can never redeem 
America with a legislature whose breath is tainted 
with whisky. You never can do it ! God save the 
legislatures from the fearful curse of being con- 
trolled by the liquor element in this country ! But 
" money makes the filly go ;" you have heard 
that. Money makes the filly go. And I will tell 
you another thing: money makes the filly's son 
go, too. The earth swallow me up before I would 
lend myself to any influence and join any citizen of 
this country and help him to debauch and damn my 
race ! I would die by the inch ; I would walk up 
on a burning fire and be burnt to ashes before I 
would lend myself to an infernal alliance like that. 

In Georgia (and I know it is true of other States), 
we have had men in the Legislature that just stag- 
gered around town drunk, on both sides of the streets, 
and they staggered into the legislative halls drunk. 



334 Sermons and Sayings. 

They were not fit to be in the penitentiary, mucli less 
the legislature. God give us sober men — sober men 
to rule us and to make our laws ! God save our 
codes and our statute books from the danger that 
liquor will do them all over this country ! 

^^And he joined himself to a citizen of that coun- 
try." Whenever a legislator joins himself to a citi- 
zen of that country he is going to do some bad 
work. Whenever a governor, a Supreme Court 
judge, whenever any influential man joins himself 
to the devil, he can play havoc among the rest of 
men. Now, listen again : ^^And he fain would 
have filled himself with the husks that the swine 
did eat." Now, you notice he went at the most 
disreputable job in the world, and when he went 
to feed the hogs he would eat the husks, and 
he fed the hogs on husks, and ate husks himself; 
ate the same thing he fed the hogs with. "He 
fain would have filled himself with the husks the 
hogs did eat." 

Did you ever notice the fact that just what the 
devil makes you feed other folks he makes you eat 
yourself? Did you ever notice that nine out of ten 
of these beer-drinking fellows are puffed up with 
beer, so that if you would stick something in them 
it would run out by the gallon? Did you ever 
notice that nine barkeepers out of every ten die 
drunk themselves ? Did you ever notice that ? If 
you feed other people on liquor, the devil will make 
you drink it. If you pour beer down other people, 
the devil will make you gulp it down, and away 
you go. God pity a man that just sits and feeds 



The Prodigal's Return. 335 

out damnation to others^ and then sits and enjoys 
it himself. 

Ah, me, what an awful thought. Just what you 
feed other folks on you will feed yourself with. 
You are a gambler, and you win other folks' money, 
and the devil makes you sit right down to the 
table, and you lose it again. Did you ever notice 
that? That's just as certain as we are in this 
house this afternoon. 

"And he fain would have filled himself with 
the husks that the swine did eat." O how low down 
we get, how low down we get. I took a bar- 
keeper into the church once, and he said: "Jones, 
I never sold liquor but nine months, and I stayed 
drunk those entire nine months. I could n't sell it 
without staying drunk ; my conscience would not let 
me." I like that ; that 's a sign a fellow has got 
some conscience. It is a sign his conscience is not 
dead. But there are men in this town that sell 
whisky all the year round, cool, sober men. You 
who do this have no conscience; your conscience is 
dead ; dead and buried forever, and God pity you. 

" And he joined himself to a citizen of that 
country." Some of us have joined ourselves to a 
citizen of that ^ country, and O, how fearful our 
lives are. What disreputable lives we lead every 
day. O, young man, you never could hold up your 
head again in the presence of your poor mother if 
you could get your conscience aroused once more. 
O, think what awful lives we have led, and then 
think how pure and good our lives might have been. 

"And he joined himself to a citizen of that 



336 Sermons and Sayings. 

country, and he sent him into the field to feed 
the swine;" and after this famine had pressed him 
sore, and he began to be in want, what then ? "And 
when he came to himself'^ — O, brother, here is a 
point ; let us look a minute. " And ^vhen he came to 
himself." What is the matter with humanity ? What 
is the matter with you? What was the matter with 
me? I look back fifteen years ago. What was I 
doing? Wringing the blood out of my father's 
heart; making my precious wife cry her eyes out, 
and my little innocent ones threatened with no home, 
and with orphanage, and with want. What was the 
matter with me ? Do you mean to tell me if I had 
been myself I would have done that way ? No, sir. 

I will tell you another thing : If you can get 
your eyes wide open this afternoon you will be turned 
around, a sensible man, and won't do as you are 
doing. A man of good, sound sense, to say nothing 
about religion, won't treat his wife as you treat her 
and love her as you love her. A man of good, hard 
sense won^t treat his children as you treat your 
children, and at the same time love his children as 
you love your children. I tell you there is some- 
thing wrong with humanity. 

And that boy bid his father good-bye and started 
away, and spent weeks on the road, and spent 
months in feeding swine, and filling himself with 
the husks that the swine did eat, and all at once his 
eyes got opened and he came to himself. Look 
here, I can 't help believing that there was a strange 
infatuation had hold of him. I don't know how 
you feel about it, but when I look back I say, " I 



The Prodigal^s Keturn. 337 

was n^t myself, and there is no use talking about it." 
And every son in this country that is running in his 
mad career, he is mad with his wickedness, his in- 
tellect is beclouded, he does n't see himself, and he 
does n't see the truth as it is. Now when that boy 
came to himself he said, ^^Why, sir, who am I? 
What am I? Where am I? What am I doing 
here?" Look here, it will do you some good if you 
will ask those questions this afternoon; ^'Who am 
I? Where am I? What am I doing here?" O, 
brother, you are away from where you took your 
mother's hand the last time, you are away from 
where your father's advice would have led you. 
Where are you ? Joined to a citizen of that country 
feeding swine, damning humanity. 

" And when he came to himself." Just here let 
me say this much. I had gone along, and occa- 
sionally I had realized that I was n't living right ; 
I saw that my wife was fading away in grief; 
I saw that my father was dying by the inch. At 
last I looked around me and came to myself, thank 
God, and I glorify his name forever for that day 
in my history when I got my eyes wide open and 
saw the deeds of my life, and saw how wicked I was. 

O, brother, I thank God for getting my eyes 
opened that day ; and since then I have been sing- 
ing, ^^ Happy day, happy day, when Jesus washed 
my sins away." I was a new man, a saved man, 
and I went right about and left off my wickedness 
from that day to this. 

And when he came to himself what did he do ? 
He said, "In my father's house even the servants 

29 



338 Sermons and Sayings. 

have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with 
hunger. Here I am starving to death, with the 
best father and the best home a boy ever had.'' 
And when he got his eyes open what did he say ? 
" I will arise and go to my father.'' I will arise. 
Look here, that boy got the whole secret of the 
matter in that one expression — I will, I will, I will 
arise and go to my father. When he said that, the 
miles between him and his father's house melted 
away ; there was nothing between him and his father. 
" I will arise and go to my father." 

I suppose the devil said to him, '^ Well, you are 
in a pretty fix now to go to your father." And did 
you ever notice this is just what the devil will do 
to you ; he will take you by the heels and drag you 
through the mud holes of sin, and then make you 
get up and look at yourself and tell you that you 
ain't fit to go anywhere. Did you ever notice 
that ? O, what a mean old devil he is ! He said to 
this boy : " Just look at yourself now ; you ain 't fit 
to go home ; you have no clothes and you are a thou- 
sand miles from home ; you have no shoes, how can 
you walk ? You have n't got a dollar to pay your 
way ; you have no hat to cover your head. Ain't 
you a pretty one talking about going home ?" But 
when that boy jumped up in his manhood and in 
his resolution, and said, "I will arise and go to my 
father," why, sir, there was God Almighty's excur- 
sion train run right up to the side of him, and it 
came to a dead halt, and God told him to get 
aboard, and that He would see him the balance 
of the way. If you will say that this afternoon and 



The Prodigal's Keturn. 339 

mean it, God will do the rest. " I will arise and go 
to my father; I am going, money or no money, 
shoes or no shoes, hat or no hat, miles or no miles, 
I am going.'' 

And now we see him start back — no shoes, no 
hat, no money, and a long way to go. Off he 
starts and on he goes. And I imagine I see 
him when on the way he comes across the man- 
sion where he had stopped some time ago, and 
where he had been insulted when the man did not 
want to charge him any thing. I imagine he 
looks at that place, and says, " I believe I will not 
go in the front door, but I will get through the 
fence and go around behind the orchard ; I do n't 
want to see those folks." And he climbs the fence 
and takes the back way around the orchard until 
he passes the house, and comes to a poor negro 
cabin, and he says, "Auntie, I wish you would 
give me some bread. I have n't got any money — 
have n't got a cent to pay you, but I have got the 
best father a boy ever had ; and if you ever see my 
mother and can hear her thank you once for any 
favor shown her boy, you will be paid for it. 
Please, auntie, just give me a little bread." That 
colored woman gives him a pone of bread, and he 
turns around and goes to the roadside and lies on 
a pile of leaves and goes to bed. He learned that 
from the hogs. He is going to bed, now ; piles up 
in those leaves, and sleeps all night. 

The next day he passes on down the way; and 
I imagine, as he went down the road, two neigh- 
bors were talking together, and one said : " Do you 



340 Sermons and Sayings. 

remember that grand pageant going down this road 
some time ago, and the princely young fellow in 
his phaeton ? It was the talk of the neighborhood 
for a whole month." And the other one spoke up, 
and said : ^' Yes, he stopped at my house, and I 
insulted him the next morning, because I did not 
charge him any thing." And then the first fellow 
said : " Did you see that dirty, vagabondish tramp 
go dx)wn the road this morning ? " ^^ Yes," says 
the other. " Well," says the first, " there was 
something about his face that reminded me of that 
princely boy that came down the road a few years 
ago. I do n^t know what made me, but I thought 
of that princely boy as this pauper and beggar." 
^' O, no," says the other, " that can 't be that 
princely boy." " But I believe it was the very 
same fellow." 

Look here, citizens of Cincinnati. Here is a 
man who has been out West twenty years, and he 
comes back to Cincinnati, and a poor, bloated, be- 
sotted, drunken wretch staggers along the walk; 
and that gentleman who has been living in the 
W^est twenty years says : '' Who was that staggering 
along there ? " ^^ That's Bill So-and-so, son of 
Colonel So-and-so." '' That can 't be he ; Bill was 
one of the nicest young men in the city." ^^ I tell 
you that is Bill So-and-so ; he has been a vagabond 
for ten years." " Well, well, I never saw such a 
change in a fellow in my life." You just let the 
devil get hold of some of them and keep them 
awhile, and their own folks won't know them. 
That's what's the matter. I will have nothing to 



The Peodigal^s Retuen. 341 

do with a man that will despoil my countenance 
and ruin my health so that my own precious 
mother can 't recognize me. 

There is a grocery- keeper, an ex-barkeeper and 
gambler in this town. I saw him two weeks ago. 
He came to me and talked with me about religion, 
and he came forward here and gave himself to God, 
and I met that same fellow in the streets a day or two 
ago and I did n^t know him. His skin was clear, 
and he looked well ; and it is astonishing how the 
Lord God can take one of these poor vagabonds and 
make a new man out of him right away. And it is as- 
tonishing how the devil will treat you the other way. 

And on and on he travels. He is going back 
now, and I tell you there is no distance, no hard- 
ships, no any thing to a fellow that is on his way 
back. And look at him now ; he is just as humble 
as a dog; you can just say any thing to him now; 
you can't hurt his feelings. Why, he is perfectly 
willing to be kicked about by any body. He feels 
that he has deserved it, and that's the difference 
between going away and coming back. 

O, my congregation, this afternoon, in all love 
and kindness, do you see yourselves in this picture 
as wandering off from God ? And how many have re- 
solved : " I will go back ; I will go back.'' And 
this poor boy suffered in sin, until at last he says : 
" I will arise and go to my father, and will say 
unto him. Father, I have sinned against heaven and 
before thee, and am no more worthy to be called 
thy son ; make me as one of thy hired servants. 
And he arose and came to his father. And when he 



342 Seemons and Sayings. 

was yet a great way off his father saw him and had 
compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and 
kissed him. And the son said : Father, I have 
sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am no 
more worthy to be called thy son.^^ 

I have thought about him many a time. I 
imagine he came up the road near the old home- 
stead. And I have seen that prodigal approach and 
look down toward the old homestead ; and there 
was home, and peace, and plenty ; and there was the 
picture just as he had carried it from his youth- 
ful days — home, and peace, and plenty. And 
then he looked at the home, and then he looked 
at himself, and he says : " Just look at me ; I 
am not fit to go any further at all ; O, my, I 
believe I am willing to lie down and die; a place in 
the old cemetery will do me." And he sits down 
and says : " I can go no further ; I won't go any 
further.'' And while he -sat there his father saw 
him a great way off, the Bible says. His father 
saw him, and they were eyes of mercy that looked 
out that way ; and his father ran to him, and those 
were legs of mercy that carried that father ; and his 
father ran up to him and kissed him, and those 
were kisses of mercy that he imprinted on that poor 
boy's face ; and his father spoke to him, and those 
were words of mercy ; and the poor prodigal lifted 
up his face and said ; ^' Father, I am no more 
worthy to be called thy son." And the father just 
clapped his hand over his mouth, and would 'nt let 
him say another word ; and he said to the servants : 
" Bring forth the best robe and put it on him ; and 



The Peodigal^s Keturn. 343 

put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet ; and 
bring hither the fatted calf and kill it, and let us 
eat and be merry, for this my son was dead, and he 
is alive again ; he was lost, and he is found/^ 

O, precious Father in heaven, I can recall the 
day when I was a poor, wretched, ruined man, 
despairing, dissipated, godless, wicked, and when I 
had sought thee and prayed to thee, and thou 
didst not bless me, I broke down and said : " I 
give it up; I am not worthy to go to my Father 
at all.^^ And just when I broke down and said : 
" I give it up ; there is no hope for me, in sight of 
the old homestead," my Father in heaven saw me, 
and his eyes were eyes of mercy ; and he ran to 
me, and his feet were feet of mercy ; and he flung 
his arms around me, and his arms were arms of 
mercy ; and he spoke to me, and his words were 
words of mercy. And I said : " O, Lord, nothing 
but sin have I to give." And God whispered back 
to me : " And nothing but love shall you receive." 

Blessed be God for the prodigaPs return and 
welcome. Ring the bells of heaven, there is joy to- 
day. O, brother, every man in this house, every 
boy in this house, who wants to live and die under 
the roof of the old homestead in our Father^s house, 
I want every one of you to stand up. Those who 
will say conscientiously : " I want to go back, and I 
want to live and die under the old roof and home- 
stead in my Father's house," stand up. Blessed be 
God. O, angels, come and carry the news back 
that these prodigals are coming home. 



344 Sermons and Sayings. 



SAYINQS. 



Until twenty-five years of age I was. the big- 
gest fool you ever looked at^ only when you look in 
the mirror yourself. 

Salvation in its highest sense is to love every 
thing God loves and hate every thing God hates. 
What I love and what I hate determines who 
I am. 

I EATHEE like the expression of that good old 
woman who cried out : " O, Lord, if you will only 
save me in this world, you shall never hear the last 
of it in the next.^' 

The Judgment Day. — Without such a day as 
this in the great future before us we might meet 
parties in heaven that would astonish us. We have 
known many a knotty, gnarly, hard-to-be-under- 
stood Christian in this world, and we have thought: 
"Well, if this man gets to heaven I would be sur- 
prised,'^ and without such a day as that, if we 
should meet such a man in heaven we would won- 
der through all eternity " how could this man have 
got there ; '' but with a day like that before us, 
when God shall bring this brother before the great 
white throne, and shall strip him of all his idiosyn- 
crasies and shall show you all the pure gold of his 
character, and shall say to him : " Come, ye blessed,^' 
a universe will stand around and say " Amen '^ to 
this brother's commendation. 



SBRIVEON XVII. 

SPIRITUAL ORACKS. 

^ ^svnton io Witter. 

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long- 
suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. 
Against such there is no law."— Gal. v, 22. 

THE questi.on before us this morning is "wives" — 
wives in all the tender relations toward those 
whom they love. For this cause a woman will 
leave father, mother, and home for her husband, 
and these twain shall be one. There is no more 
sacred relation than this. There is no relation in 
life that has so much joy and so much self-sacrifice 
as this holy relation, ordained of God. This man, 
this woman, mutually agree to take each other as 
husband and wife, and live together after God's 
holy ordinance in the sacred relation of marriage, 
and they further sacredly promise to agree to love, 
treasure, and keep each other in sickness and in 
health as long as they both shall live, and, forsaking 
all others, they cleave unto each other. 

How solemn the rite of matrimony! How 
solemn the vows on that occasion, and your happi- 
ness and the happiness of your husband depend 
largely upon his unflinching and your unswerving 
loyalty to your vows. All trouble and all heart- 
aches in this relation have been brought about by 
a want of fidelity to the vows made to each other 

345 



346 Sermons and Sayings. 

in the presence of God. " Whom God hath joined 
together let no man put asunder/' There is no 
spot on earth that you enter more sacredly, and yet 
some enter more ruthlessly, than that belonging to 
husband and wife, and interference there may cost 
two persons their souls. It may cost you your life. 
There is no relation in life in which we need more 
patience and more forbearance and more of the for- 
giving spirit. There is no relation in life that you 
and I, as third parties, have less business to be 
interested in. " Busy-bodies '^ suggesting, planning, 
advising, have broken up the peace of many a 
home in this country. A mother-in-law, a father- 
in-law, a cousin, an aunt, a nephew, O if you could 
remember that God said it ! — " Whom God hath 
joined together let no man put asunder.'^ I believe 
I will let any body in the world talk to me about 
any thing and every thing except about what my 
wife is doing. If she has any faults I do n't want 
to know it. If she has done any thing wrong I 
would rather die than know any thing that would 
be unpleasant for me to know. I despise tattlers 
and gossip-mongers. You 've heard of 'em have n't 
you? I tell you, in this sacred relation about the 
best thing that you can do for those that have any 
trouble, is to get down on your knees and ask God 
to bless that w^oman and help her to understand her 
husband, and to bless that husband and help him 
understand his wife. 

Nine-tenths of the difficulties of wives and hus- 
bands occur from the fact that they misunderstand 
each other, and the woman that will believe no ill 



Spiritual Graces. 347 

of her husband and the husband that believes no ill 
thing of his wife, are the happy people in this life ; 
and the reason the wife believes no ill is because 
she knows her husband is true to her, true to God, 
and true in all the relations of life ; and the reason 
the husband believes no ill of the wife is because 
he knows her to be faithful to him, to her God, and 
pure and good in all the relations of life. I do n't 
think we ever made a greater mistake than to 
attempt to deceive each other. I would rather see 
my wife buried than catch her in a downright 
falsehood. 

How can a woman ever respect a man that has 
told her one downright falsehood? Truthfulness, 
patience, a desire to understand the whole question — 
perhaps all these things are at the bottom of home 
felicity and home happiness. Now, in order that I 
may do as I should do, it is all important that I 
should be what I ought to be. 

Now, we are not going to talk so much on what 
we ought to do as we are going to talk on doing. 
I must be something in order to do something. 
That old song that I was talking about the other 

day, 

"O, to be nothing, nothing! " 

we have sung and cried over until it has turned 
out to be nearly true ; but I do n't want to be 
nothing. I am willing to be nothing until the 
Lord gets hold of me and makes me something, 
and then I want to be something all the rest of 
my life. 

This morning we have an interesting subject. I 



348 Sekmons and Sayings. 

may be able to see many things more interesting, 
but I can discuss no question more profitable than 
this — the fruit of the Spirit. If there is a good 
woman, if there is but one true, good woman in 
the universe, I want that woman for my wife. If 
there is but one true woman and one noble woman 
and one pure woman, I want that woman for the 
mother of my children ; and that is the sentiment 
of every man who lives on earth. Whatever all 
others may be, God give me a pure wife and good 
mother for those around my hearthstone that call 
her mother. We will flee away this morning into 
a higher and better experience and spirit. The 
fact of the business is, we have groped around in 
these old pastures of society and city life, and we 
have lived so long on these old pastures until the 
grass is mighty short, and you have to bite well 
down to the ground to get any grass at all. 

The Lord help us up into the green pastures 
and beside the still waters, where we can feast and 
fatten on the grass of righteousness. Ain't you 
getting tired of the old pasture ? Won't you be led 
out into the greener ones, and enjoy God in the 
best and highest sense ? Then listen to this discus- 
sion. The fruit— the fruit! "The fruit of the 
Spirit." The tendency and end of all vegetation 
around us is to mature fruit. I look now at that 
grand old oak tree with its bare branches, and in a 
few more weeks, in the Spring, it will begin to bud 
and blossom and leaf out, and then I notice that it 
is gathering from all the stores in the atmosphere, 
and drinking in all the moisture at its roots, and 



Spiritual Graces. 349 

by and by I see that tree pouring its vital fluid 
into the little acorn, and I see the acorn week after 
week growing, and developing, and expanding, and 
the old tree is bending all its forces and gathering 
from all resources and pouring its vital fluids into 
the little acorn, and still the acorn grows, until by 
and by I see the yellow, rounded, beautiful, matured 
acorn lying on the ground beneath, and then I see 
the grand old tree shed its leaves in the Fall, and 
see its forces going back to Winter quarters. That 
old tree, from the first bud on its branch until it shed 
its leaves, used all its efforts to produce ripe acorns. 

Go into the garden in the Spring, and see that 
apple tree bud and leaf out and blossom, and the 
little apple appears, and then I see the tree bending 
all its energies and gathering from all sources, and 
pouring out into the little apple all its vital fluid, 
and I see the little apple growing, developing, and 
expanding, and by and by there ^s a ripe, juicy, red, 
luscious apple, and then I see the tree cease its ef- 
forts, shed its leaves, and go back into Winter 
quarters. The tree started out to mature ripe ap- 
ples, and as soon as matured, it ceased. It has 
reached its ultimatum when it bore matured fruit. 
I grant you there are a good many intervening dif- 
ficulties between the blossom and the ripe fruit; there 
are the cold frosts of April and the wintry winds of 
March and the worms that gnaw at the core of the 
fruit, but the tree answers the end for which it was 
created just in proportion as it overcomes all these 
obstacles, and matures the fruit for your garnering. 

"The fruit of the Spirit!'' In the vegetable 



S50 Seemons and Sayings. 

world around us, just as the end of the oak and ap- 
ple tree is to mature fruit, so the purpose of every 
Christian life is to produce and mature Christian 
fruit. The fruit of the Spirit is love. This is the 
fruit that blossoms highest up the tree ; this is the 
fruit that Christ raised upon the spiritual tree, which 
shed its blossoms on all below. "The fruit of the Spirit 
is love.^^ Every Christian woman and every Christian 
man in this world, in the hour of their conversion, 
bud and blossom into this Christian fruitage of love. 
If there 's any thing that 's Christianity in the con- 
crete, it is love. If there is any that is contrary 
to Christianity, it is ill-will, hatred. I don^t know 
how you feel, but I can tell you this much: The 
hour I was converted to God, I blossomed into this 
Christian fruitage of love. I recollect down in my 
town there was a fellow I had an uncompromising 
dislike and contempt for. I actually hated the man, 
and yet I did n't know the reason for it. Have n't 
you seen people you did n't like, and almost hated 
them whether you wanted to or not ? The Lord 
loves every body. I know he does, but I thought 
many a time there were people the Lord did n't ad- 
mire, to say the least of it ; and I did n't admire 
this fellow from our town — I disliked him. When 
I was seeking religion I never thought of this, but 
after my conversion I met this man on the street, 
and I saw I loved him just as much as any body 
else, and I have never had any thing against him 
from that day to this. If religion does any thing for 
me, it makes me have love for every body that God 
loves, and that means every body. 



Spiritual Geaces. 351 

Love ! Fourteen years ago I budded and blos- 
somed into a Christian life and love. There are a 
great many intervening difficulties between the 
blossom and the ripe fruit; I can tell you that. 
There are the cold winds of neglect, and there are 
the blighting frosts of temptations, and the worms 
of depravity that gnaw at the heart of the spiritual 
tree, but I answer the end for which I was created 
in Christ just in proportion as I overcome all diffi- 
culties, and by the grace of God mature my fruit ; 
for this is a world of fruitage, a world in which I 
grow and develop and mature fruit, and after a 
while God will gather my fruit in heaven, and I 
shall have fruit and bread forever, and he or she 
who fails to mature Christian fruitage in this life, 
will have no fruitage to eat and rejoice over in the 
world without end. 

There are a great many intervening difficulties 
between the blossom and the ripe fruit. Many a 
woman, when she tastes of the pardoning power, says 
she will love every body. Love is the sublimest 
passion that ever moved the heart of God. Love 
is the power of Christ — a power known unto men. 

Mother, your control over your children is owing 
to your love for them. Your supreme command 
over your husband is largely owing to the fact that 
your love conquered and your love controlled him. 
Love will go a long way in this world. What you 
can 't do by love you need not try to accomplish 
any other way. Love will argue, love will contend, 
and love will pledge itself, but above all things love 
can cry. That^s a great thing. I have had my 



352 Sermons and Sayings. 

wife argue and contend with me over points, but I 
could always beat her at an argument or in a war of 
words, but I never had her yet to cry but what I 
surrendered right there and then. " Just quit cry- 
ing, and I ^11 do any thing you say." - 

Sister, you have made a mistake if you use any 
weapon except love to fight with. Love ! Now, at 
this point I must grow and develop the fruitage. 
Whatever there is to make you mad or angry, or 
resentful, or make you bear malice in your heart, 
here come in the worms of depravity, the biting 
frosts, the chilling winds, and it is my business to 
see to it I overcome all these difficulties, and ma- 
ture Christian fruit. It is a sad sight to see a wife 
or mother who blossomed into this fruitage, and 
just about the time the little fruit made its appear- 
ance she let some one walk up under her spiritual 
fruit tree and flail the last particle of the little ama- 
teur fruit off her spiritual tree. Sister, you have 
had that done many a time. The saddest sight in 
the neighborhood is to see a spiritual tree standing 
stripped of its fruit, and the little amateur fruit 
lying all over the ground under the tree. Did you 
ever see anything of that sort ? 

Fruitage ! I tell you, too, if they treat you as 
they did me you 'd have no frait at all. I must 
tell you how other folks do about maturing fruit. 
Down in Georgia, in the peach orchards, after the 
trees have blossomed, the farmer sees there's going 
to be a cold north wind and a clear sky, and he 
knows he's going to have a frost, and they roll 
logs and make big heaps of brush, and burn them 



Spieitual Graces. 353 

all night, and let the heat and smoke blow over the 
orchard, and keep away the frost of the night. O, 
how essential it is to keep the warm fires of the 
Holy Ghost burning all around us to keep the 
deadly frost away. It is all essential for me that 
I pray to develop my fruit. Look at your apple 
tree in the garden. You see it in full bloom — and 
God never made a prettier bouquet than an apple 
tree in full bloom — you keep and preserve it just 
in proportion to the apples it bears. 

" Three different years," saith the Lord, " have 
I sought fruit and found no blossoms. Cut it 
down. Why cumbereth it the ground?" The ax 
is laid at the root of many a good tree in this town. 
God has planted and dug and fertilized many trees 
in this town, until it seems his patience has almost 
given out. If we ever bud and blossom let us pray 
God to let us live long enough to mature ripe fruit. 
Love ! Blessed Christ, thou art the one we would 
follow ! Look how gloriously he matured his fruit. 
Of those who surrounded his cross in his last mo- 
ments he said : " Father, forgive them ; they know 
not what they do." Through all the cruelty and 
neglect and ingratitude manifested towards him 
Jesus bore a spirit of love and good will toward 
mankind. 

Now, where there 's love there 's no enmity or 
malice or ill-will. A woman whose heart is full of 
love is happy ; but a woman that runs love out of 
her heart is a miserable woman. You Ve been mad 
a whole day. Wasn't that a great day for you? 
I have known women who pouted all day. I can 

30 



354 Sermons and Sayings. 

stand a quarreling woman, but these pouters get 
away with me. They pout at the table, and they 
pout in the parlor, and they pout on the street. 
Now, my little Bob used to pout, but he got behind 
a door or under a bed to do his pouting. I liked 
that. If I were going to pout I would get under a 
bed and have my meals sent to me. Sister, when 
your heart is full of love your face will be full of 
sunshine, and you ^11 make home a happy place. 
Let me say this to you : Many a woman is always 
quarreling with her husband about staying home at 
night, and when he does stay home she ^s everlast- 
ingly after him, and God will have to reverse the 
universe before you can make that home lovable. 

You quarrel with your husband to stay home, 
and when he does stay home you quarrel with him. 
^^ I Ve got the contrariest husband in the world. I 
can 't keep him home a minute,'' says many a 
woman. You make home the happiest place in the 
world, and you can't drive him away. There are 
exceptions to the rule, of course ; but, i^f home is 
the happiest place in the world, I 'm going to show 
you that human nature will go where it can enjoy 
the most pleasant place on the earth. You can do 
any thing with your husband with this spirit of 
love. I have known mothers to manifest ill-will 
and spite toward their children. I '11 tell you 
another thing: When a wife gets mad with her 
husband she can say the worst things in the world ; 
but, when a woman gets mad with her children, she 
can be the hardest upon them. I have been in dif- 
ferent cities and towns, and have seen some mothers' 



Spiritual Graces. 355 

conduct toward their children — their married chil- 
dren. I know one mother who had her notions 
and mind fixed that her daughter should marry a 
wealthy young man ; but the daughter did n^t love 
him. And I tell you another thing: whenever a 
woman marries for money she is making herself a 
hard bed to lie in. I tell you, every woman ought 
to marry on the same principle my wife did. I 
neither had money, nor was I very pretty ; it was a 
case of pure love. Well, as I was going to say, 
that mother had picked out some rich young man 
for her daughter to marry ; but the daughter could 
not think that way and love that way, and she mar- 
ried another young man, and they did well in life 
and prospered; and God was good to them, and 
they had every thing to make life comfortable ; but 
that mother, as unrelenting as death, never forgave 
that daughter. O, what a thought ! Is there a 
mother in this town that do n't speak to her daugh- 
ter and love her with all the tenderness of her 
nature ? 

O, mothers, will not the lower animals be a 
lesson to you in your conduct toward your children, 
and teach you to love them ? What is it that could 
make me dislike my children? What could rob 
any child of mine of the love of my heart ? What- 
ever our children do, let's win them by love, and 
keep their confidence, and train them for a better 
life. A mother that won't speak to her children ! 
I don't believe there's an old cat in town that 
would n't speak to one of its kittens ; I do n't be- 
lieve there's a lioness in the Zoo that wouldn't 



356 Sermons and Sayings. 

speak to its young ! O, mother, shall you be more 
degraded than the lion or the cat or the mouse ? 
If you will come to understand that, whenever 
pride takes the place that love ought to occupy, you 
are going to do a heap of mighty foolish and mean 
things. Whenever pride takes the place that love 
ought to occupy, how cruel pride is, and how selfish 
pride is, and how stubborn pride is. When you get 
that compound into a thing it is mighty bad — cru- 
elty, stubbornness, willfulness, pride ! 

Sister, just open your eyes to the genial rays of 
the Sun of righteousness, and let love spring up in 
your heart and live therein, and live everywhere, 
and live under all circumstances, and say : " O God, 
if you will let me bud and blossom into this fruit- 
age, I will gather from every source, from all 
points, from the heaven above and the earth be- 
neath me, from all communion with God, from vis- 
iting the sick and giving to the poor, and from all 
good words and works will I gather and pour into 
this Christian fruitage of love ! '' 

"The fruit of the Spirit is love." I am a 
Christian just as I love, and I am not a Christian 
just as I hate ; and with love reigning in your 
heart and shining out on all, you are like your God, 
for God is love, and he that loveth is begotten 
of God. 

I had two brethren in my Church once who fell 
out and quarreled, and they seemed like to have 
fought; and I tried my best to get them to settle 
up, but they would n't do it ; and then I tried my 
best to get them to fight it out, but they would n't 



Spiritual Geaces. 357 

fight ; but about six months after that, at a revival 
service, I looked over, and there I saw these two 
brothers hugging one another in the church. They 
made up all their difficulties, and O, how happy they 
were. I took one of them aside after service, and 
I said : ^^ Brother, answer me an honest question. 
You have been mad six months. God says, when 
thou bringest a gift to the altar, and there remem- 
berest if thy brother has ought against thee; first 
be reconciled to thy brother, and then oiFer thy 
gift. You prayed while you were mad many a 
time, did n't you T Said he : " Mr. Jones, if I 
have acted the rascal I have n't acted the fool. I 
haven 't been on my knees since I got mad." I 
like that! Some people will get on their knees to 
pray while they are mad with somebody. I found 
out that if I did the joke was all on me then. 
Whenever I get mad the joke is all on me then. 
I am hurting none but myself. 

Let love through all your actions run and all 
your words be mild. I remember once, myself, a 
minister about forty years old met me with other 
brethren, and we commenced talking, and after 
awhile the preacher lost his patience and got mad, 
and said, O so many hard things to me; and I sat 
and enjoyed the whole thing, and started off and 
walked down street; and after I got down a piece, I 
heard some one calling after me, and looking across 
the street I saw it was the preacher, and he ran across 
the street with the perspiration pouring off his face. 

Said he : " You 're an awful hard man to catch. 
I 've tried to find you so bad, to beg your pardon 



358 Seemons and Sayings. 

for what I said. Do forgive me, and I '11 never do 
it again/' Said I: "I've nothing to forgive." 
Whenever you stay in good humor and they get 
mad you may be sure they '11 come back to you. 
Do n't say any thing to them, and they '11 be rack- 
ing over to straighten it out. Keep your temper 
and love every body ; and the Lord says : " When 
a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his 
enemies to be at peace with him." 

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, and I believe 
a joyless religion is a Christless religion, and every 
religious life buds and blossoms into the fruitage of 
joy. I like that old song, 

" Religion never was designed 
To make our pleasures less." 

If any body ought to be joyous and happy it is 
a Christian person. Christian wives, joy will keep 
you in perfect peace if you make your home attract- 
ive to husband. Wear a smile always. You see some 
wives and they are always moping, and she looks 
as if her Father in heaven had just died and had n't 
left her a cent in the world, and she 's so disconsolate ! 

If you would make home wear one big smile 
always what a grand thing it would be. I love to 
see every thing smiling. I love any thing that will 
bring a smile. As I said the other day, let 's quit 
singing, " The Sweet By and By," and sing the 
sweet now and now. In joy make home pleasant. 
Make home pleasant! A thing of joy is a thing of 
beauty forever, as well as a thing of beauty is a 
thing of joy forever. Try to be joyous and pleasant 
for a whole week. Keep your faces straight, and 



Spieitual Geaces. 359 

if they get out of shape let it be with a great, big 
smile as broad as the double doors on your parlor. 
I like a smile a mile long sometimes. Some of 
you can 't keep your faces straight a week. If you 
will go home and be right joyous, and look happy 
for a week, your husband will say, "Well, if Sam 
Jones hasn^t done any thing else in this town, he 
has changed my wife. I have a pleasant home." 
Many a poor fellow wants to see a brighter face on 
his wife, and sometimes we do so wretchedly we 
can ^t smile. The children see it all — the children 
hear it all. Many a woman whipped Billy, and 
Johnny, and Mary, and Julia, about fussing with 
one another, and the truth of the business is they 
had learned to fuss from their father and mother. 

I do nH mean to say you women fuss with your 
husbands or husbands fuss with you, but I know a 
woman in Georgia that fusses with her husband, 
and I know you would n't have a fuss if you could 
see her. I asked a man once, " How often have 
you and your wife quarreled ?'' "We don't quar- 
rel,'' said he. " Do you mean to say you never said 
an unkind word to your wife ?" " That 's so," he 
replied. I turned to his wife and asked, " Do n't 
your husband ever speak unkindly to you? " " No, 
sir; never," she said. I looked at him again and 
asked, " Has n't your wife never give^j you one cross, 
crabbed word?" "No, sir; she never did," he said. 
I said, " I would like to get your pictures to take 
home with me — man and wife that never said an 
unkind thing to one another in their life !" Why 
not have it always joy and peace and pleasure 



360 Seemons and Sayings. 

and enjoyment? O, these little riffles — these little 
troubles ? 

We must gather from all sources and mature 
this fruitage. And then He said : '^ The fruit of the 
Spirit is love, joy, peace/^ It is grand to love and 
glorious to have joy, but how sublime to have 
peace growing and developing in the heart. I 
heard of a man who was put away up in a corner 
room of a hotel, and every morning he opened his 
eyes the first thing that greeted his ears was the 
tramp of men, and the jar of the horses' feet, and the 
roar of the street cars, and the confusion of the 
wagons. One morning he woke up and every thing 
was quiet. He did n't know what was the matter. 
" Have I left the city ? No ! Have I changed 
rooms ? No ; this is the same room ! Is it Sunday ? 
No ! Then, what 's the matter ? '' He got up and 
looked out, and there were the street cars and 
horses and men and wagons going and coming just 
as usual, but there was no noise. He looked again, 
and saw that the snow had fallen some ten inches 
deep, and all was going on as usual, but there was 
no noise — the snow deadened the sound ! 

Sister, let 's stay under the snow clouds of peace, 
and let them fall down upon us, and you and we 
will have peace and quiet — peace at home, peace 
abroad. I like very much the old woman in 
Stewart County, Georgia, when my father was 
refugeeing South. Father was going along one day 
and drove up and asked : ^^ Mother, is your hus- 
band in ? '' ^^ No, sir." " I want to get some 
corn, if you please, for my stock,'' said my father. 



Spieitual Geaces. 361 

*^ I think my husband has corn to sell, but he is n't 
at home/' the old woman said. " When will he be 
home ? '' " I^ot before to-morrow.'' " I would like 
very much for you to let me have some corn," my 
father again said. " I canj't do it ; I do n't know 
whether he has corn or not," the old woman said. 
" It 's very necessary I get some," said my father. 
^* But, mister," the old woman said, " I do n't know 
whether husband would like it or not, and I would 
rather have peace at home than abroad," said the old 
woman finally. Sisters, think of that sometimes 
when your neighbors make suggestions to you about 
entertaining and one thing or another. You know how 
that thing works. Whatever pleases your husband, do 
that to please him. "I would a heap rather have 
peace at home than abroad. I do n't live with you. 
I live with my husband, and would rather have peace 
at home than abroad " — that 's what you should say. 

"Peace, love, joy, long suffering ^^ — do you know 
what that means ? That 's one of the greatest fruits. 
Long suffering m^ans, I will bear it always. How 
many women sin and say : " I have borne that old 
thing as long as I am going to, and if she does it 
again I '11 give her a piece of my mind." A 
piece of your mind ? How big a piece would you 
give her ? You ought to take that back and say : 
" I '11 give her a piece of my tongue " — you can 
spare that ! Long suifering ! 

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long 
suffering, gentleness. I love a gentle horse. A 
gentle horse has scarcely any value at all. I re- 
member old John. He was a grand old horse. The 

31 



362 Seemons and Sayings. 

children would go to the stable and climb up his 
legs, like trees, and they could drive him any way. 
If John were to run away a few times, he would n't 
have any value at all. A gentle horse — wonder if 
it's the same as a gentle Methodist or a gentle 
Baptist? That sister yonder can get up in style for 
some entertainment, but when it comes to getting 
up clothing for the orphans, how she is n't there ! 
She never was one of those Church members who 
could do any thing. I often think of the fellow who 
went to Dr. King, and said his wife and daughter 
wanted to join Church, and said he was ready to 
pay for his pew. If the devil lived in Cincinnati 
he would run you out of church — he 's always at 
meeting, and would naturally want a comfortable 
seat. " I '11 rent my pew, but if you want me or 
my wife or daughter to do any thing, we can 't do 
it. I'll pay the pew rent, however." Dr. King 
said : " My friend, the Church of the Heavenly 
Rest is right around the corner." 

Many a woman in this town thinks she belongs 
to the Church of Heavenly Kest. Nothing to do — 
husband pays pew rent, and does mighty little at 
that. A woman over yonder says : " That 's mighty 
little," but I have got to get down to many little 
things to strike you. " Mighty little ! I think she 
has little to do." That 's so ! I saw a great big 
fine horse once, a magnificently developed animal, 
but he would n't work to a thing but a little red- 
striped buggy ; but hitch him to that, and he would 
go a-clipping. He was a great horse in a little red- 
striped buggy, but he would n't pull a wagon or a 



Spieitual Geaces. 363 

carriage, or anything else ! Sister, have you ever 
seen one of these striped-buggy Methodists racking 
out Sunday morning at 11 o'clock? You can hitch 
them up to any little entertainment, and they '11 
drive grandly, but you could n't hitch one of them 
to a prayer-meeting to save your life. He won't 
work anywhere but Sunday morning at 11 o'clock 
at dress parade ! 

Many a woman in this house this morning has n't 
been to Church any morning but Sunday morning 
for years. Those old hills are depopulated every 
Sunday morning at 11 o'clock, and when I speak 
of the hills, do n't think I mean aught against those 
good people. Some of the best people God ever 
blessed this earth with live on those grand hills 
around this town. By up-on-the-hill folks, I mean 
those folks who are up so high on the hill of pride 
they can 't come down on the earth where Christ 
would meet them and bless them and save them. 
When I refer to up-on-the-hill folks, I mean folks 
that won't work to any thing under Heaven but a 
Sunday morning 11 o'clock buggy. Suppose you 
had a horse that would n't work to any thing but a 
striped buggy, and then wouldn't work to that 
even — what would you do with him ? Suppose you 
could n't sell him, that being a swindle ? Why, take 
him out and kill him ; I would n't sell such a horse 
as that to any body. Taking this city, if you 
picked out your Sunday morning 11 o'clock crowd, 
what would you ask for them ? If you would do 
like many stores, to sell dead stock, you'd have to 
start a five-cent counter, or you 'd have to put 'em 



364 Seemons and Sayings. 

in bunches and sell 'em five cents a bunch, and 
then you M have to beg a fellow's pardon for cheat- 
ing him. The more of them you have, the poorer 
you are. Sunday-morning-11-o'clock Christians 
ain 't worth the powder and lead it would take to 
kill 'em ! 

Gentleness ! I '11 tell you another thing, sister — 
your husband is one of that sort, and it 's your fault, 
too ! When you were first married your husband 
wanted to go to meeting with you, but you would n't 
get up, and now he does not want to go, and the 
devil will get you both as certain as we are here 
to-day if you do n't improve. Many a woman in 
this country has gone into partnership with the devil 
to damn her husband. In a Church down our way, 
at Eaton, Brother Dodge was pastor, and he told 
me he married a Christian girl to a young man who 
didn't belong to the Church, and in less than six 
months that Christian girl had her husband hard on 
the road to the devil. 

It would be impossible for me to be a good man 
without a good woman to help me. Your husband 
will never be any better than you are. A woman 
must never follow her husband, but must take his 
arm and walk by his side ! I do n't believe in see- 
ing a husband first and a wife next — husband and 
wife must be side by side ! I do n't believe a man 
has any more sense than a woman ! I 've seen 
many a woman who ought to have swapped places 
with her husband, to say the least of it. What does 
a great big first-class sensible woman want, toddling 
about in this world with a little old sawed-off, one- 



Spieitual Graces. 365 

horse man* that is n't worth a cent ? I would go to 
the legislature and have my name changed, and 
make him take my name ! How would it sound to 
hear one man ask another, "What was your name 
before you were married ?" 

Here is another woman. Her husband comes 
home and says, " Wife, let 's go to prayer-meet- 
ing.'' " No," she says, " I 've been thinking about 
you; you look so care-worn and tired, I don't 
think it's best for you to go out at night. I am 
going to rub your head." She's gone into partner- 
ship with the devil to damn that fellow. Sister, 
you do your duty, or move your boarding-house. 

Love supreme ! Gentleness ! Gentleness ! A 
woman can win with gentleness when every thing 
else fails. I recollect a fellow who was gambling one 
night, and when 1 o'clock came he jumped up from 
the table and said : " Boys, I 'm going home. I 've 
one of the best wives in the world waiting for me. 
Why, she 's so kind and gentle, if you all were to 
come up home with me now, and I were to ask her 
to get you all supper, she would do it." One of the 
old gamblers laughed and said : " I 've been hearing 
of that sort all my life, but I never saw one." 
Well, they all went up to see, and they rang the 
door bell, and then he introduced her to his gam- 
bling friends, and said : " Wife, we 're all hungry and 
want supper." She invited them with smiles into 
the parlor and said she would get supper as quick 
as she could, and when it was ready they all sat 
down and were waited on like princes, and when 
the meal was over one old gambler turned to her 



366 Seemons and Sayings. 

and said: "Your husband told us, but we wouldn't 
believe you were such a good woman. Tell me, 
how can you be such a wife to such a husband?" 
Her lips trembled, and the tears ran down her 
cheek, as she said ; " My husband is a poor gambler, 
and I have prayed for twenty years that God would 
save him, but God does not answer my prayer, and 
the poor fellow will soon be dead ; but I will make 
this life as pleasant as possible to him." The old 
gambler turned to the husband and said: "How 
can you be such a husband to such a wife?" And 
he jumped up and said: "Gentlemen, I am going 
to surrender to my wife to-night. I give myself 
to God and wife for a better life from this hour." 
And it is said afterward that man preached the ser- 
man that won all these other gamblers to Christ. 
If your husband will not be good, and will go to 
hell, make it as pleasant in this world as you can. 

" Gentleness, goodness, temperance." I ^11 stop 
here a moment and say something about tem- 
perance, as I have n't said any thing about it since 
I have been here. If your husband wants to drink, 
tell him he can 't make a bar-room of your home. 
If he wants you to stir toddies for him, you must 
say : " Husband, go down town and let those fear- 
ful wretches that are damning people stir your 
toddies in the bar-room. I can 't do it." The big- 
gest fool, sister — and I say fool as the Bible uses 
it — in Cincinnati, is the woman who will stir tod- 
dies for her husband and make them sweet and 
nice ! Gone into partnership with the devil to 
damn her husband and make him die a drunkard ! 



Spieitual Graces. 367 

Look here ! whatever sin may be brought against 
ray wife in my drinking days, the angels will clear 
her of that, for she never suffered a drop of the in- 
fernal stuff to be brought to her home ! If my 
wife had sweetened my toddies for me as you do 
for your husbands — some of you — I would have 
been in a drunkard's grave before this. If there 's 
any thing in the world a woman ought to hate it's 
whisky. Temperance ! Go home this morning and 
gather up those demijohns and bottles, and take 
them into the back yard and knock them to pieces. 

Some of you say, " I '11 want some for my next 
entertainment." Yes, the devil will entertain you 
for a while, and that will be the end of you ! Look 
here, wife, my Bible teaches : " Touch not, taste 
not, handle not the unclean thing." The best thing 
to do is to throw out every thing in the house that 
ever poisoned a soul or drove a man to degradation 
and death. One woman said the other day : ^^ It 's 
ridiculous the way Mr. Jones talks about cards. 
How can I entertain my husband without playing 
cards?" Have you an idiot for a husband? In 
the asylum the superintendent recommends cards, 
and if you go there you can see the poor insane 
persons playing cards! 

Sister, send your husband to the asylum, and 
have him entertained there! What do you say? 
"Can't entertain your husband without cards!" 
Poor old soul ! She must have been like the woman 
who was entertaining her husband at table, and 
they had a little spat, and she fired something at 
his head, but missed it and hit the motto up over 



368 Seemons and Sayings. 

the door, "God bless our home/^ The little boy 
said : " You missed pap ^s head, ma, but did n^t you 
give the motto hail Columbia ! " 

Stop that progressive euchre business ! Quit it. 
It 's gambling as certain as God reigns in heaven ! 
Whenever at a game of cards you put a party on 
this side and a party on the other, and put up a 
prize for the winner, that ^s just as much gambling 
as if the prize were a thousand dollar bill. That 's 
playing a game of chance for a thing that 's put up, 
and progressive euchre is gambling, as certain as 
death, and nobody but gamblers play it. Sister, I 
would hate to sink down to hell with the stigma on 
me that I lived and died a gambler. It is bad 
enough for men to gamble, but when women begin 
to gamble it 's a disgrace to God's creation ! Stop 
it! Stop it! 

"Goodness, temperance, faith." I sometimes 
dwell on these things too long. Let's live right, 
and let them adorn our every-day life, and then, 
some of these days, we are going to have a glorious 
recognition up yonder! 



SERMON XVIII. 

NIOTHKR — HOIVIK— MKAVKN. 

The Lord is my shepherd. — Psalm xxiii, 1. 

I HOPE this sermon will be profitable to all of 
us. This is one of a series of services for women 
only, and is held with a special reference to mothers. 
There are three words that are very closely associ- 
ated with each other in our minds, and perhaps 
mean more to us than almost any other three words. 
These words form the subject of this service: 
"Mother, Home, Heaven.'' 



'■' Music Hall presented an unusual scene yesterday morning— a 
scene the like of which has not been witnessed since the hall was 
erected. Every seat in the auditorium and in the balcony and on 
the stage was occupied by a woman. There were old women bent 
with the age of years, their silvery hairs and halting step testifying 
that something unusual it was that brought them forth on such a 
damp, muddy, disagreeable morning ; young women in their teens, 
and middle-aged women, maids and wives, society women and toil- 
ers in the house and workshop; women in silks and women in 
calico— women, in fact, of all kinds and of all nationalities. It was 
an audience seldom gathered together— an audience that only the 
eloquence and earnestness of Sam Jones could bring together, and it 
was well repaid for all the discomforts of the horrible weather that 
has been hanging in murky clouds over our heads for a week. Rev. 
Mr. Jones is in his element when he has such an audience as this, 
and tears and sobs were many as he uttered some of his wondrous 
truths, and drew in vivid colors, and with an imageiy rare, such 
pathetic pictures and graphic descriptions as would melt the heart 
of the hardest woman on earth. His sermon was a powerful one, 
and many a mother present yesterday morning said "Amen " as he 
told of the fearful sins and shams of society in the world around. 
The sermon was intensely interesting, and the report will be found 
well worth the reading by many women, and men, too, who werQ 
detained from yesterday's service.— Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, 
January 29, 1886. 

369 



370 Seemons AifD Sayings. 

Mother ! What is home without a mother ? How 
may I ever find my eternal home without a mother's 
prayers to inspire me and a mother's hand to guide 
me? History teaches us some valuable lessons on 
all its pages concerning this thought. Do you 
know that Nero's mother was a murderess? She 
gave to this world the most cruel man in the his- 
tory of humanity. Lord Byron's mother was a 
proud, intellectual woman, worldly-minded in all 
her ways, and she gave to this world one of the 
most profligate, dissipated, intellectual autocrats 
(Lord Byron) the world ever saw. John Wesley^s 
mother was a praying, painstaking, sensible, pious 
woman, and she gave to the world one of the rich- 
est and grandest characters; and to-day John 
Wesley's mother is the grandmother of one of the 
greatest religious denominations in this nineteenth 
century of ours. George Washington's mother was 
a good, plain, sensible woman, and she gave to the 
world, to America, a man that won the title, " The 
Father of His Country.'' 

Some one said once : " If I could mother this 
world I could save this world ; " and another said, 
"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." 
In a woman's meeting, some months ago (and I 
assert there is no more important meeting ever 
called together than a meeting of mothers), the 
question was sprung, " How old ought children to 
be before we begin to train them for God? to nur- 
ture them in the admonition of the Lord ? " And 
one good mother said : " I think we ought to begin 
at six years of age with our children." A second 



Mother — Home — Heaven. 371 

said : " Why put off so long ? Why not begin at 
the age of five ? '' And a third said : '^ I began 
with mine at four.^' Another good old mother 
said : " We must begin to train them in the paths 
of righteousness from the day we begin to train 
them to walk." At last a good old mother in 
Israel arose and said : " I'll tell you when to start: 
begin twenty years before the birth of the child 
with its mother ?'' O, sisters, if you will give a 
child a good mother she will see to the training of 
that child, and she will begin at the right age. 

The mother ! I want to say here, this morning, 
that, in reading the history of King Josiah, in the 
Bible, in a period of corruption and wicked influ- 
ences, with nothing to bring him to a pure and 
holy life, I've often wondered at his being such a 
good man in the midst of such wickedness and cor- 
ruption; and I can trace Josiah's goodness to no 
other source than to the fact that he had a good 
mother ; and I say to you all, this morning, if you 
will take the Bible, and the preacher, and the 
Church, and all means of grace, and put them all 
on this side of me, and put my good mother on this 
other side, and ask me : " Which will you take, 
and endeavor to make your way to God the most 
successfully ? '' I believe I 'd say, " Take the preach- 
ers, and the Bibles, and all other means of grace 
away from me, but leave me my good mother, 
for I believe she will succeed in carrying me to 
heaven.'' 

A good mother is the greatest blessing ever be- 
stowed on a family of children ; and a godless. 



372 Sermons and Sayings. 

wicked, worldly mother is the greatest curse that 
ever blighted a home ! I can understand how men 
can be wicked. I can, in a measure, understand 
how it is men can forsake God and live a worldly- 
life ; but the most terrible moral anomaly and mon- 
strosity in the universe to-day is a godless, Christ- 
less mother, with innocent children playing around 
her home. O, mothers, of all beings in the world, 
God demands of you that you be the purest and the 
best! I have said this much as preliminary to 
what I shall read, discuss, and comment upon this 
morning — the Twenty- third Psalm : 

" The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not want. 
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he 
leadeth me beside the stiir waters. He restoreth 
my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteous- 
ness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk 
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will 
fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and 
thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table 
before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou 
anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. 
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the 
days of my life ; and I will dwell in the house of 
the Lord forever." 

I am glad, my sisters, that all commentators are 
agreed that David is the author of this Twenty- 
third Psalm. It makes little difference to me just 
now who is the author of the Nineteenth, or the 
Fiftieth, or the Seventy-third Psalm; but I am 
especially glad to believe that David is the author 
of the Twenty- third Psalm. You know that David 



Mother — Home — Heaven. 373 

was the shepherd boy who cared for the flocks of 
his father, and when he penned this psalm no doubt 
his mind ran back over his youthful days when it 
was his duty to care for his father's sheep. David 
remembered how, in the morning, he led the flock 
forth to the pasture, and how, in the afternoon, 
late, he brought them back to the fold. David re- 
membered that it was his special care to see that 
all the sheep were provided for. When the little 
young lambs, by want of strength, could not walk 
to the pasture, he took them in his arms and car- 
ried .them to pasture. And David remembered 
how, when the old and decrepit sheep were left in 
the fold, and could n^t go to the pasture, after he 
reached the pastures in the morning, as the grass 
with dew was wet, and tender and sweet, he pulled 
up great armfuls of the tender grass, and in the 
evening carried it back to the fold for those old 
and decrepit sheep. 

If I am young and without strength my Shep- 
herd will carry me to the green pastures. If I am 
old and decrepit, and can not get to the green pas- 
tures, my Shepherd will bring the sweetest grass to 
the fold for me. 

" Even down to old age all My children shall prove 
My sovereign, eternal, omnipotent love ; 
And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn, 
Like lambs they shall still in my bosom be borne." 

Blessed be God ! Christianity, with its every 
truth among men, is the only institution that pro- 
poses to look after the gray hairs of the world ! 
Mothers and fathers in gray hairs, defenseless and 



374 Sermons and Sayings. 

friendless, when your children forsake you God 
will take you up. 

" The Lord is my shepherd.'^ David remem- 
bered the day when the wild beasts came down 
upon his sheep and carried off one of his lambs; 
how he followed the beast and overtook and slew 
it, and brought the lamb back to the fold. He re- 
membered how water, and food, and shelter, and 
every necessary comfort, were provided for his 
sheep; and now looking over the picture of his 
youthful days as a shepherd boy, he lifted his face 
to God and said : " O God, as I am greater than a 
sheep, and as thou art infinitely more great than I 
am, so much more art thou my shepherd, and I shall 
not want.'' 

" I shall not want." There is a place in God, 
mother, that you ought to seek^ — where no vacuum 
left by the loss of any thing leaves a wound in your 
soul. The time comes to us in our peace with God 
where we can give up all, and yet praise God for 
his love, and when it seems we have more left than 
when God began to take from us. There is that 
scattereth abroad and yet increase. I shall thank 
God as he takes my children, for I shall want them 
more in heaven than on earth. Did you ever read 
that precious book, "Stepping Heavenward?'' 
Every mother should read that book. As you turn 
its pages you will involuntarily write on the mar- 
gin, " That 's me ; that 's me." O, what a book of 
light ! 

I recollect an incident of a father and mother. 
The father was a physician, and their little Willie 



Mother — Home — Heaven. 375 

was ill, and growing worse for several days, until 
at last his condition was critical. About midnight 
one night the mother came down and walked into 
the sick-room, where her husband sat by little 
Willie^s bed-side, and as she entered she threw her 
eyes upon the pale, hard-breathing little invalid, 
and as she looked at him she threw herself on her 
husband's breast, and cried out in an agony of fear : 
" O, husband, God is going to take our little Willie 
away !" and she sobbed and cried aloud. Directly 
the husband looked up and said : " O, wife, do n't 
say God is going to take our child from us, but if 
little Willie is not better by daylight, we will give 
him to God.'' O, precious mother, that can see her 
child transplanted from the thorns and brambles of 
life to the roses of the paradise of God, and say : 
" I have given God a child !" Thrice happy that 
mother who has a child in heaven! That mother 
who has a sweet one in heaven is a better mother 
to those she has left than she ever would have been 
if God had not given her a child in heaven ! O, 
how those little waxen, ice-cold fingers bind our 
memories back to many a hasty word and act 
scattered along our backward track, and, O, 

" How those waxen hands remind us, 
As in snowy cerements they lie, 
Not to scatter thorns, but roses, 
For our meeting by and by." 

" The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." 
I shall not want ! I shall not only have protection, 
but if the enemy approacheth God will throttle that 
enemy. If I want food God will bring it me, 



376 Sermons and Sayings. 

and whatever my needs are, my sweet faith takes 
in all the providential beneficence of God, and I 
shall never lack for any thing. You will be happy 
the day you settle the question and say : I ^d rather 
be the least of them and in rags than wear a royal 
diadem and sit upon a throne. 

There are women in this city that the society of 
this town bow and scrape to in their presence, and 
they imagine themselves queenly beings, but the 
woman that bows in loving faith before God is the 
honored one among good women. Society ! society ! 
A leech of the heart, and when society shall fix 
itself upon your life-blood, it will draw the last 
drop of blood out of your heart, and you ^11 be a 
bloodless, heartless woman, and that^s the worst 
thing God'a eyes ever looked upon — a woman with- 
out a heart! You know what society does for a 
woman. A woman that enters society and goes the 
giddy rounds forgets her children, and God, and 
every thing, and she comes in contact with the most 
heartless creatures God ever saw, and by and by she 
is transformed into a heartless wretch like those 
around her. 

I never went into society myself— they would n't 
let me in — may be because I was too poor, or else I 
would tell on 'em. I only know of it as society 
women who Ve been reformed have told me, and to 
tell the truth, I never did see many reformed 
society women. They 're as scarce as hen's teeth, 
as the old saying is. God pity a woman that has 
forgotten God, and all she thinks about is : " How 
will I shine?" and "What spot must I rub next 



Mother — Home — Heaven. 377 

to make it shine ? '^ and " What will I wear next V^ 
or " I Ve been eclipsed at Mrs. So-and-so's house, 
and here 's another about to eclipse me f^ or, " If 
they jump up and crack their heels together three 
times, I must jump up and crack mine four 
times. I must try to beat this mean old thing.'' 
Did n't you ever try to beat a neighbor on fine 
houses and entertainments ? 

The Lord pity a woman that will sacrifice every 
thing the Lord holds dear for the sake of trying to 
outshine some one else ! Good women try to shine 
within themselves ! Fool women try to outshine 
others ! ! Draw your own conclusion, sister, as to 
which class you belong to ! The minute you begin 
to talk about society there's a whole lot of poor, 
ignorant, innocent women say : " I never heard of 
that ; no such thing as society." Yes, and you look 
as if all you needed were a pair of little golden 
wings, and you 'd be off to glory ! ! Sister, you 
know what I 'm talking about ! Let 's turn loose 
all things that interfere with heart, and sympathy, 
and godliness, and let's bid them an eternal fare- 
well ! ! A mother — a heartless mother — who in her 
love for show, and love for criticism on that line, 
and for the purpose of being spoken of in the 
circles of society, will set wine, and beer, and 
brandy on her entertainment table, will sacrifice the 
sobriety of her husband and children, and doom 
both to hell forever to have a little finer cham- 
pagne, and have her society friends smack their 
lips over it and say : " That 's the best in town ! " 

I '11 tell you another thing. You '11 never reform 
32 



378 Sekmons and Sayings. 

Cincinnati, or New York, or any place else from 
intemperance, and degradation, and death, until you 
reform the respectable people of this country ! You 
can put that down. As long as mothers run bar- 
rooms at their homes, you can ^t blame men for 
running bar-rooms on the street corners of the 
town ; and mothers who train their children at home 
to drink, can 't blame the children for going to bar- 
rooms and getting it whenever they want it. I 
have known mothers to set out brandy and wine at 
their home, and in the gay flirtations of life the 
loved ones began to dissipate and drink ; and I Ve 
had that mother come to me afterward wringing 
her hands, and with a look of infinite despair on 
her face, say : '^ Help me, for God's sake, to save 
my husband and children, for they seem already to 
be beyond the reach of the arm of God ! '^ How 
many mothers in this house to-day whose heart is 
bleeding, drop by drop and hour after hour, be- 
cause of their children's sins, and yet they have 
been contributing to the transgressions of their sons 
and husbands. 

" Mother " ought to be the synonym of all that's 
pure, and holy, and good, but instead of that, it 
has reached a point in this country where mother 
means simply an idle name, and her interest and 
care for the souls of loved ones is no more than if 
they hadn't any souls to be interested in great 
questions at all ! 

There 's a mother out there that has spent more 
time in preparing her daughter for the ball-room 
than she ever spent on her knees praying God to 



Mother — Home — Heaven. 379 

save her daughter from hell ! What do you expect 
from the children of such mothers as that? She 
will have the finest dressmaker in the town two 
weeks on a dress for her daughter, and when that 
dress gets home that mother will spend more time 
altering that dress than she ever spent on her 
knees in her life praying to save her daughter from 
hell. What can you expect from women like that? 
I Ve said many a time if I had to marry a thousand 
times — and I ^m like the Irishman who said, " I 
hope I ^11 never live to see my wife married again " — 
the further I could get away from the giddy pleas- 
ures and sinful amusements of life, to get me a 
good wife just that much further would I go, I 
would never go to a ball-room to get a first-class 
wife. You can get wives in ball-rooms, but I 
never said what sort. God gives a man a 
good wife, and you know who gives him a 
bad one. 

Mothers, there are thousands of influences around 
us to-day that speak out in unmistakable language, 
" Call a halt.^^ Let us turn our faces toward God 
this morning and say : " The Lord is my Shepherd,^' 
and the Shepherd of my children, and we shall not 
want for purity, or for honor, or for pleasures, or 
for sustenance, or for any thing that is best for us 
in life and in eternity. The way to keep yourself 
from want is to keep somebody else from wanting. 
The best way to get God^s help is to pitch in and 
help some one else, and God will help those that 
try to help others; and if every mother in town 
would do her best to try and reform her own home 



380 Sermons and Sayings. 

and the homes of others, O, what a glorious country 
we would have. 

One great curse of this century is idle mothers 
and idle daughters. There are women in this 
country who board around continually. They never 
turn their hands to any thing useful in the universe. 
They never stitch, they never hem a handkerchief, 
never darn a pair of socks for their husbands, and 
they never do any thing. All they do is to manage 
to get down to the breakfast table every morning 
before the dining-room is closed, and then they say 
sometimes : " It seems to me they could be a little 
more accommodating round here, and run the thing 
a little later than they do.^^ They manage to get 
down to dinner or supper, and that's about all; 
and if they ever get out it is to go to some enter- 
tainment, or theater, or to some millinery shop, or 
to some first-class dry goods house. What's such 
an anomaly as that worth? Nothing in the uni- 
verse. Nobody in this world can be any account 
and do nothing. Nothing ! Why, if some of you 
women of that sort were to die to-morrow, and 
they were to keep it out of the newspapers, nobody 
would know you are dead unless it be those who 
miss you at the theaters, and the milliner would n't 
see you. I do n't know even whether your husband 
would miss you. I reckon, though, he 'd miss you 
about the time the monthly bills usually come in. 
I reckon he 'd miss you then ! 

Sister, no matter how much your husband is 
worth, if you are not necessitated to work for 
yourself, go out and work for others. I declare to 



Mother — Home — Heaven. 381 

you to-day, if I had the means and opportunities 
that some women in this house right now have, 
I 'd visit homes, and make calls on the poor, and 
do every thing that would be of benefit to mankind. 
You see some women who say, ^^ I have n^t any 
use for this poor white trash," and nine out of ten 
of these very same came from that sort of stock. 
A generation or two back you ^11 find that some 
poor financier, or poor white folks, pitched in and 
made a whole lot of money, and you ^re their 
daughter or their grand-daughter, with an immense 
fortune to start with ; and perhaps your husband 
came from the same sort of stock ; you unite your 
fortunes, and you think you are princely people. 
A magnificent family — whose father may be was a 
rag-dealer. If there 's any class of people in this 
world I 've a contempt for it 's these kind of people 
that say, " I have n't any use for this poor white 
trash," and you do n't have to take the back track 
more than a mile on this sort of people before you 
find out who their grandfathers were and what 
they did. 

" The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." 
I '11 say to you this morning that if you have con- 
fidence in God you '11 never want for any thing. 
^^ He maketh me to lie down in green pastures." 
Sister, be conscious that God is your father and do 
your duty, and you will lie down in green pastures. 
That's a position of ease. "Lie down in green 
pastures" — not on the rocks or in the wilderness 
where the wolves prowl about, but " in the green 
pastures." I have nothing now, but when I get 



382 Sermons and Sayings. 

hungry I can get right up and go to eating all 
around me " in green pastures." " He leadeth me 
beside the still waters." O, what a gracious picture. 
I have seen this picture on the walls of a parlor. 
The young sheep at the edge of the pool with the 
old sheep in the water; the little lambs playing on 
the banks, and it reflected their antics and gambols; 
and as I looked, I seemed to hear the old sheep 
say : " We have had enough for this time, and enough 
for to-morrow, and enough for evermore ;" and 
such a picture of contentment I seldom ever looked 
at before. 

" The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. 
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures ; he 
leadeth me beside the still waters." David naturally 
jumped from the idea of the sheep to the idea of 
human beings, you see. Did you ever stop to think 
how close we were all to sheep anyhow? They 
say, ^^ Two heads are better than one, even if one 
is a sheep's head," but sometimes you strike a fellow 
with both, and that 's bad. We 're a kind of sheep 
any way. It 's natural for sheep to wander off and 
get lost, and when a sheep does get lost, it's the 
most defenseless thing in the world, and when you 
call it to come to you so you can shelter it, it just 
ups and runs away. You are that way, too. It 's 
the most natural thing in the world for you to 
wander off from God, and when you do wander 
away, how defenseless you are, and while God has 
been calling you back all these years, you've been 
running the other way. O, how much we are like 
sheep! There are no real sheep here this morning. 



MoTHEE — Home — Heaven. 383 

and therefore I am not afraid of offending them. 
Sheep! David gets away from the idea of the 
sheep, and he says, " He restoreth my soul.^^ We 're 
getting to a point now, sisters. I want to impress 
on your mind, ^^ He restoreth my soul.'' 

When I was a pastor in the South I heard of 
the sickness of one of the members of my Church. I 
was called there, and drove out of town about five 
miles. When I got out of my buggy I walked up 
the avenue to a beautiful country residence and rang 
the door-bell. Some one admitted me, and I walked 
in. The husband met me soon, and I saw such a 
sad and dejected look on his face. He asked me 
into the parlor, and when I went in I saw that 
every thing there was covered with dust and all dis- 
arranged. Directly he returned, and asked me to 
walk into his wife's room. I walked in and 
up to the bed-side, and there on the bed was the 
pale, sick wife ; her hand was hot with fever, and a 
hectic flush covered her face. As I looked into her 
burning eyes and into her sunken cheeks, she said: 
" O, how much I'm suffering?" A suffering 
wife — a suffering mother. I do n't believe there 's 
one man in a thousand that 's capable of sympathiz- 
ing with a suffering wife, with a suffering mother. 
Sister, sometimes suffering is the fire that purifies 
the gold. 

A suffering wife ! Well, as I was about to say, 
I staid at this house of my member, and was in- 
vited to dinner. As I entered the dining-room I 
noticed every thing was dirty and disarranged. 
When we left the room the children burst in, and 



384 Seemons and Sayings. 

the mother said, pettishly : " Nurse, take these 
children away; they almost break my head with 
their noise. Keep them out, nurse." Well, dinner 
was announced, and, as I said, every thing looked 
as if it was pitched on the table — no knife at my 
plate, no spoons on the table. After eating in 
some way and getting through, I came into the 
sick-room again, and had prayer and read the 
Bible. When I left the house I looked back and 
said : " O, there 's the saddest home I ever saw." 
Just three months after that, after preaching one 
day at a country church, a red, rosy, bright-faced 
woman ran up to me and said : " Mr. Jones, do 
come to dinner with us to-day." " I do n't know 
you," I said. '^ Well," said she, " you must go 
any way." " All right," said I, " if I must I guess 
I '11 have to go." 

So I got into my buggy and drove down the 
road after them, and they stopped in front of a 
beautiful country residence, and as we all walked 
up the steps three or four children rushed out on 
the porch and met the mother, and she took them 
all in her arms, and she hugged the little fellows, 
and romped and played with them like mad. We 
walked into the parlor, and I noticed how nice 
every thing was kept, and how regular it looked. 
Then we walked into the family-room, and every 
thing there was as clean as a pin and elegantly 
arranged, and we then went out to dinner. The 
dinner was fit for a 'prince, and she presided so 
elegantly, and the husband looked so happy, and 
the children looked so gleeful. When I got in my 



Mother — Home — Heaven. 385 

buggy, after it was all over, and drove down the 
avenue, I looked back over my shoulder, and I said : 
'^ That 's the happiest house I ever saw." And, 
sisters, that was the very same house I was at be- 
fore. So changed I did n't recognize it. One time 
mother was sick ; next time she was restored. 

Sister, there's as much difference in your home 
with your poor soul drooping and perishing, and 
your soul feasting upon God, and growing in grace 
and righteousness. Just as much difference in your 
soul as there was in that home I described — in a 
physical sense. In a thousand homes I've known 
F ve seen such a marked difference. If you will get 
your soul toward light, and get full of love to God 
and man, and go home to-day and live there two 
weeks that way, your husband will have to call in a 
neighbor to identify you. He '11 say : " This looks 
like the same woman, but she does n't talk or act like 
it. I never saw such a change in a woman in my life." 

I 'd as soon expect the world to come to an end 
right now as to expect some of you to get full of re- 
ligion, because you 're so full of other things you 
can't throw them out! How do you expect God 
to live in your home with you ? You 've a card- 
room in your house, but is there a grace-room in 
your house ? Did you ever build a prayer-room in 
your house for family devotion, and say : " O, 
Christ, be thou an eternal guest in my house, and 
live here and abide with me for ever ? " Folks that 
have cards, and wine, and worldliness, and balls, 
never have any room in their house for Christ! 
Never ! 

33 



386 Seemons and Sayings. 

We will never have redemption in this country 
until we get mothers restored to love and harmony 
with God. Never, never! Here are Mary and 
Annie. Mary is eight and Annie is six years old. 
Husband comes home to dinner, and wife says : 
^^Husband, do you care if next Wednesday night I give 
a little party to the children f' " A little party?" 
asks the husband. " Yes/' says wife, " a little 
party.'' " Why, wife, the children are too young to 
be talking about parties." " O, yes," says wife, 
"every body has parties for the children. It's just 
a little, little, little party, that's all." "Why, 
wife, I tell you our children are too young to be 
thinking of parties." " Well," says wife, " that has 
always been your way. The Lord knows I some- 
times wish we did n't have any children ; they 're in 
jail all the time, and can't see any pleasure at all; 
and the fact of the business is, I believe you 're 
going to ruin the children by the iron rod you're 
holding over them." 

That's the devil's way. The devil came near 
getting old Job from bottom to top, when he got 
Job's wife against him and got her for him. You 
see, when the devil gets a woman, he has a power. 
Well, the husband talks against it until he sees 
he 's got to let up or have a row. You know what 
that means, do n't you, sister ? He knows he 's got 
to say " Yes," or you '11 pout about the house a 
whole week. I mean the women that ain't here — 
we never pout. This thing has to be carried out. 
Well, the children have a " little party." What is 
a little party ? Nothing but a big party with short 



MoTHEE — Home — Heaven. 387 

clothes on. That ^s all it is ! And what is a big 
party ? It ^s nothing but the ante-room to the ball- 
room. What 's a ball-room ? It 's nothing but the 
ante-room to the " german.'' What ^s the " ger- 
man ?" It 's nothing but the ante-room to infinite 
and eternal disgrace and damnation ! 

Mothers train their children for the devil and 
hell, and by the time they 're fifteen I 'd as soon 
preach to a goat as to one of 'em ! How many 
children have you seen in any of these meetings ? 
It's gray, hairs and grown-up people here. Our 
children, some of them-, are trained by the circles 
they reside in to resist the word of God, and they 're 
as impervious to the truth as if they were seventy- 
five years old in sin. My experience among men 
is, I take in ten adults to one child. What 's the 
matter ? Mother, when it 's too late, too late, you 're 
going to call a halt. Mark what I tell you. There 
are incidents and scenes occurring in every city in 
America to-day that make the mother faint and 
swoon, and drop down and say, " Almighty God, am 
I to blame for this ?" Read the daily papers ! 
There's been things in the papers since I've been 
here that ought to have made every mother walk 
into the family room and say, " Husband, children, 
we will call a halt!" 

You say, some of you, " Why, Mr. Jones, if we 
do what you say, our children can 't amuse them- 
selves or have any pleasure." I '11 say this much : 
If my children can 't enjoy themselves without 
parties and dances, and cards, and all that sort of 
things, then they can move out. They '11 have to 



388 Seemons and Sayings. 

find another boarding-house. They can't eat my 
bread and run on that line ! No, sir ! I say, " You 
can rack out of here whenever this home doesn't 
suit you.'' My Julia Baxter is only eight months 
old; and there are not five children in all Georgia 
that has more fun than mine do, and I won't let 
my children mix with these things ! No, sir ! The 
Lord pity our race that has degraded and groveled 
so low that it must go into all sorts of excesses 
to have pleasure. 

Let me drop back a minute on two girls, one 
from this house and another from another house. 
You '11 know them as soon as I show them. Well, 
here are pictures of two homes : 

The first picture : Little Annie walks in. An- 
nie is six years old, and says, " Mamma, please 
ma'am, give me some thread for my needle," and 
mamma looks at her and says, " Yes, there you are 
again, you little vixen. You 've wasted more thread 
than you 're worth to-day, and you 're always troub- 
ling me. Get on your bonnet and get out of the way 
and go and play." Annie drops her head and walks 
off. Next day Annie comes in and says, "Mam- 
ma," — mamma is busy at the machine, — " Mamma, 
give me some scraps for my doll dress." Mamma 
says, "I won't. You've wasted more scraps than 
you and the doll are worth. Do n't bother me. 
Go away, and go over to Mrs. Brown's, and see if 
you can 't devil her awhile." Little Annie drops 
her head and walks out of the door, and when she 
gets in the yard the tears come to her eyes and she 
sobs, " I wish I was dead — that 's all I wish. Lord 



MoTHEK — Home — Heaven. 389 

knows, mamma never has a kind word for me/' 
The next day after, Annie comes in again and says : 
"Please, mamma, loan me your thimble." And 
mamma says ; " Why, you little brat, you had that 
thimble yesterday and lost it, and it took me an 
hour to find it. I '11 cut the blood out of you if I 
see you with that thimble any more.'' Annie goes 
out again crying, but this time she says : *^ I wish 
mamma was dead now — that's all I wish." Next 
day Annie comes in and says : " Mamma, may I 
have the loan of your scissors?" Mamma snaps 
out : " No, you can 't. Do you want to stick your 
eyes out, and be blind on my hands ?" Annie went 
on this way, day after day and year after year, and 
by and by she grew to be eighteen years old. I 
went to see her mother after she grew up, and 
mother draws down a corner of her mouth way 
below her chin and says to me : "I do n't know 
what 's the matter with my Annie. She 's the worst 
girl in all this settlement, and Lord knows I've 
done my best for her." 

I '11 tell you another thing : If I were a wid- 
ower and Annie's mother were a widow, I do n't 
know which I'd take — the old woman or the 
daughter. I believe I 'd take the old woman — 
she'd be dead and buried quicker. I have heard 
fellows say, when they married a lady, the father- 
in-law and all packed up traps and moved in on 
him. I do n't know but what it 's right after all. 
You ought to court the whole family and find them 
out. It is a question whether a man can get a first- 
class wife out of a third-rate family. Some of you 



390 Seemons and Sayings. 

mothers are raising wives for men that will be ter- 
rors. Mark what I tell you. I ^m like the Irish- 
man who said : " If I die there '11 be one mon who 
will regret my death.'' '' Why, who is that ?" said 
a fellow. ^^ It 's the fellow that gets my wife," re- 
plied the Irishman. This is an important question. 
As you train and raise your children up so they 
will do. What was the matter with little Annie ? 
The trouble was she was just like her mother. 

Here is another picture : Little Mary walks up 
to her mother who is sitting there quietly, and says : 
"Mamma, please give me some thread." "Yes, 
my darling, I will get it in a moment — I was just 
thinking about you ; I want you to be a good girl ; 
that is the one great desire of my heart." And she 
gives Mary the thread. Next day she comes in 
again. " Mamma, please give me some scraps for 
my doll dress." "Yes, dear. I was just reading 
a passage from the Scripture — ^Remember thy 
Creator in the days of thy youth.' Daughter, do 
you know what that means ?" " No, ma'am." " It 
means you must commence now and be good." She 
gives the child the scraps. Little Mary walks out 
and says : " I just know I've got the best mamma 
that any little girl ever had." Next day she came 
in again. "Mamma, please let me have your 
thimble." "Mamma is using it now, but I will 
let you have it after awhile. But do you recollect 
that verse I read to you yesterday?" "No, ma'am ; 
but I recollect what it was you said — I must com- 
mence to be good now; and after I went out, I 
went into my room and kneeled down and prayed. 



Mother — Home — Heaven. 391 

^ God, help me to be like mamma/ ^^ " Well, my 
darling, mamma has not said prayers yet this 
morning. Will you come into the closet with 
me?'^ And they went together and shut the 
closet, and about that time a thousand delighted 
angels rushed in. They wanted to get in and see 
what God was going to do for mother and Mary. 
And when the two came out little Mary still had 
hold of mamma\s finger. A tear that would not 
stain an angePs cheek trickled down her cheek. 
An angel crystallized it in his hand and flew im- 
mediately back to heaven among the other angels 
and said : " Here is a crystallized' tear of a sweet 
little girl that mother is training for everlasting joy 
and bliss and heaven.^^ And so the home training 
goes on, and by and by there is a little eighteen-year- 
old girl, the pride of her mother's heart, a blessing 
to the poor, to the community, and to the Church ; 
a blessing to all around her. And the community 
says : ^^ Look what a sweet, pure girl Mary is ! '^ 
Do you want to know how it comes? Mary is just 
like that sweet mother of hers. O, mother, you 
impress your character day by day upon your 
children. 



SAYINOS. 

TuENiNG Aboijt. — Rev. George Smith was 
preaching a learned discourse on the distinction 
between evangelical and legal repentance. He 
made the welkin ring, and many of his congrega- 
tion had fallen asleep, when Uncle John Knight got 



392 Seemons and Sayings. 

up in his rear pew and said : " Please let me show 
what repentance is." " Certainly, Uncle John 
Knight," said Mr. Smith. Uncle John started 
right up the aisle — he was lame from rheumatism 
and stamped this way as he marched up the aisle 
slowly — repeating the words, " I am going to hell ! 
I am going to hell ! Now, George, listen," 
said he ; "I will turn," and he wheeled right 
around. " I will show you what repentance is," and 
as he stamped along in the opposite direction, he 
repeated : " I am going to heaven ! I am going 
to heaven ! That is what repentance is." 

Many an old sinner who wants to go to heaven 
does like the man who wanted to go to Cincinnati 
so bad and yet got aboard a train going straight 
from Cincinnati to Chattanooga. 

Hell and heaven have parallel tracks. Trains 
on the one go hellward; on the other, heaven- 
ward. 

A LOCOMOTIVE engine on the track is the 
grandest thing you ever saw, but off the track it 
is a helpless lump of iron. So humanity is of no 
use on the highways of worldliness. " I am the 
way," says the Lord. Let us start out on the dirt 
road of dishonesty, and we will soon get our souls 
mired down in the dirt. I wish men could see that 
the soul has no more business off the way of Christ 
than an engine off on a dirt road. 



SKRMON XIX. 

'\?VATCtI THOU IN AI.Iv THINOS. 

Jt gt^rtnon to ^ctugihiev^* 

" But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the 
work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry." — 
2 Tim. iv, 5. 

WHAT this discussion has to do with the young 
ladies of Cincinnati, we may find out further 
along. These are the last words of St. Paul, that 
grand old man of God, to Timothy, and through 
Timothy to us, the sons and daughters of the race. 
He said four things to Timothy in this one verse, 
and these four things cover life in all its aspects 
and all its multiplied phases, and you may get 
something from each of those four things, and from 
all of them, that will make you in time honored by 
society and in eternity safe in heaven. 

The first thing Paul said has special reference 
to myself, and was this: ^^ Watch thou in all 
things." He believed we ought to be good, if we 
wanted to make those around us good. My first 
business is to look after myself, to see that I am 
straight myself, and then I am in a sort of attitude 
to straighten out others. First cast the beam out 
of your own eye, and then you can see how to cast 
the mote out of your brother's eye. Sometimes we 
are paying more attention to the mote in some one 
else's eye than we are to the beam in our own eye. 

393 



394 Sermons and Sayings. 

It is a hard matter for a giddy, gay, godless 
mother to have sweet-spirited Christian daughters, 
and it is very hard for a good and pious mother to 
stay very pious and have a set of giddy, godless 
daughters around her. " Evil communications cor- 
rupt good manners." A good mother may be 
wrongly influenced by her children, and I know 
an idle mother has a permanently bad effect on her 
children. 

The first thing said here is, " Watch thou in all 
things." We have the same idea, though perhaps 
it is a little plainer, where we read, " See then that 
ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise." 
Many a trap, device, influence, and power in this 
world that have demoralized souls and ruined men 
and women, ruined them because they did not walk 
circumspectly. Circumspection is the sentinel of 
the soul, put outside to watch the approaches of the 
enemy. In military tactics you read that sentinels 
are posted on the outer edge to watch the enemy, 
and if you will read the manual you will see it is 
death to a sentinel to fall asleep on post. The safety 
of those hundreds of thousands of men here in the 
army is in the hands of the men on post out there. 
If you go to sleep and are surprised and disarmed 
by the enemy, it is death to you. 

I tell you it is spiritual and eternal death to the 
soul for the sentinel of the soul to go to sleep. 
Nine-tenths of our trouble is that we have gone to 
sleep and our enemies have surprised, approached 
and overcome us because we were not on the watch. 
Yoii must have a vigilant, watchful soul looking in 



Watch Thou in all Things. 395 

every direction. Our Savior looked at this world 
just as it presented itself to him, and he said, 
"Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the 
dead, and I will give thee life.^^ 

Slumbering world, wake up. Rub your eyes, 
look around and see your enemies as they approach 
on every side. The enemies of mankind may be 
summed up in three words — the world, the flesh 
and the devil. I saw this illustrated once where a 
man said he had married three times (I do n't like 
that to start with) and the first time he married he 
married for riches, the second time for beauty, and 
the third time for intelligence. He said that in 
these three wives he got the world, the flesh, and the 
devil. If he gets to heaven he will have gone 
up through much tribulation. 

" Watch thyself My enemies are most of them 
within. I may have an enemy out yonder who 
wishes me harm and who will slander me, and who 
might shoot at me on the street, but that fellow 
can H do me any harm. People that talk about us 
never harm us. When you hear one man talking 
about another you can know that man is trying to 
drag him down to a level with himself — a level 
lower than the one he is on, and he wants to pull 
him down with him. Whenever you talk about 
any body you are trying to pull him down on a 
level with yourself. Let him stay up. You'll 
have more room if you let him stay up — you have 
more room down below where you are. 

I like that old blacksmith who, in his shop one 
day, was told there was a man up the road who 



396 Sekmons and Sayings. 

was slandering him and saying the worst things in 
the world about him, and trying to ruin his char- 
acter, and he was advised to go up the road and 
whip him. Said the blacksmith : " I can take this 
sledge and hammer out more good character in 
three weeks than that man can I'uin in ten years. 
I will stick to my work, let him do his worst.^^ 

'No man can harm me from the outside — the 
trouble is always on the inside. IM rather fight 
ten thousand on the outside than one on the inside. 
Our worst enemies are on the inside. 

First I will watch my temper. If I were 
preaching to a congregation of men I would dwell 
at length on temper, for men are the beings who 
have so much temper. Of course the women have 
very little. Temper, temper, temper. The most 
lovely girl in Cincinnati to-day is the girl who has 
her temper under the best control. Find me a 
person without any temper and I '11 show you a 
person there's very little in. I want a world of 
temper, but under first-class control. Temper to a 
woman and to a man is what steam is to an engine — 
it carries them along. If an engine can 't work 
her steam out through the cylinder escapes but 
blows all the steam through her whistles, it's a 
nuisance to every body in the community; and the 
woman who lets her surplus temper fly out through 
her mouth is a nuisance to all creation. 

Sister, a question of temper. Have n't you many 
a time straightened out your temper, and fixed it 
up nice and said, "I'll never get mad any more; 
I disgrace myself every day, but I 've got this thing 



Watch Thou in all Things. 397 

all right now, there '11 be no more trouble about me, 
you '11 never hear from me again ? Pardon me this time. 
I pledge you I '11 never do that way again ; " and you 
get it all fixed up nice, and it isn't an hour before 
something comes in front of your temper, and it 
goes all to pieces, and just look at that. I wish I 
had that high-tempered woman here to-day. She 
is not here, but you may just tell her what I said. 

Temper ! temper ! Temper under control. When- 
ever you feel like saying an unkind thing, say a 
kind thing, though you die. Whenever you feel 
unkindly toward a person, do him a kind thing; if 
you feel like acting unkindly, or have acted un- 
kindly, go straight to him and do the kindest thing 
you ever did in your life. One way to overcome 
evil is with good, not evil. If any one speaks un- 
kindly of you, speak a good word of him. If any 
one does evil to you, you do good in return. Re- 
turn good for evil. 

My temper is controlled largely by what I think 
and what I do, and if I think kindly and talk 
kindly about a person, I find my temper will be 
submissive; but whenever I attempt to say an un- 
kind thing or do an unkind thing, my temper gets 
out of fix. That's the way with it. The most 
lovable sight in the world is four sisters, and each 
one is just as kind as can be to the others, and they 
never speak an unkind word the year around. The 
most lovable sight in this world, I say, is loving, 
sweet-spirited sisters, as kind to each other as they 
can be, and in all their conduct they show they 
appreciate one another. One says, " Sister, I 'd 



398 Sermons and Sayings. 

rather you would have this than have it myself. 
Sister, you wear my hat, or my sealskin cloak, or 
wear any thing I have that you want.^^ The milk 
of human kindness is always manifested where the 
temper is under good control and in complete sub- 
jection to the spirit and law of Christ. Be kind 
toward one another, and you '11 find a kind temper 
is a blessing to all and a blessing to every one. 

Then I'll not only watch my temper, but I'll 
watch my tongue. O, these tongues of ours. How 
much harm, sisters, we can do in one little visit 
with these tongues of ours. The tongue ! The tongue ! 

Reading ^sop's Fables, I find where the author 
of the fables was told by his master one day : 
"^sop, I am going to have some elegant friends to 
dinner to-morrow, and I want you to serve the best 
food you can get as a dinner for them." Next day 
the guests all came and were shown into the dining- 
room by the host, and there was n't a thing on the 
table but tongue. The master became angry and 
said : " Here, ^sop, I told you to get up the very 
best dinner you could, and here's nothing but 
tongue." " O," said ^sop, " Master, tongues are 
the best things in the world. It is with the tongue 
we speak words of love and words of pleasure; 
and it is with the tongue we say kind things and 
scatter words of kindness. Tongue, master, is the 
best thing in the world." Said his master, ^^^sop, 
my company is greatly disappointed. Suppose you 
bring on the worst dinner you can to-morrow." 
And the next day when the company entered, not 
a thing was on the table but tongue, "^sop," 



Watch Thou in all Things. 399 

said the master, " yesterday you said the best thing 
in the world was tongue, and now you've got 
tongue as the worst thing." "Well, master,'^ said 
^sop, " tongues are the worst things. We ruin 
men's character with the tongue. It cuts with more 
fearful effect than a sharp-edged sword. We spoil 
reputations and assail whole communities with 
tongues." I will watch my tongue. 

I will be on the watch for another thing. 
"Watch thou in all things." I will watch my 
company. I will watch the sort of company I 
keep. There isn't a man or boy or girl in this 
country that is proof against bad company. There 
was a young lady that said to her father : " Do you 
care if I go to the ball this evening, father?" And 
the father replied : " Yes, daughter, I M rather that 
you would not go." " Why ?" asked the daughter. 
" Daughter, I don't like the company you '11 be in." 
" I know, papa, all of them are not nice, but there 
will be some nice people there, and I am not afraid 
of the bad ones hurting me." About that time 
there fell a dead coal on the grate fender, and the 
father pointed to it and said, " Daughter, what 's 
that?" The daughter said, "It's a burnt out coal, 
father." "Pick it up — does it burn you?" "No, 
father." " Well, throw it down. Now what 's that 
on the ends of your fingers, daughter?" "Why 
it's smut, father." "When you go into bad company, 
if they do n't burn you, they '11 smut you every 
time." 

Give me your attention just here on this idea. 
I do not see why it is young ladies take so much 



400 Sermons and Sayings. 

stock in the dancing snd frivolous young men of 
this country. You can bring a solid, sensible, 
thorough-going young man up, and stand right by 
his side a full-fledged dude, and tell nine girls out 
of ten, " Girls, take your choice," and they ^11 take 
the dude every one ! I \e seen a dude start down 
the road with a hundred girls after him full tilt, 
trying to catch him, and you never in all your life 
saw such a scramble as there was there. 

Here's a young man; he's a flirter; he gets $40 
per month; he's a spider-legged, jockey-club sort 
of a fellow ; you can see him and you can often 
smell him, too. I know him better by smell than 
sight. He 's a clerk in a town store at $40 a month, 
and he dresses like a prince; his opera bill is $25 a 
month, cigarette bill $20, his livery bill $40 more, 
and his board bill is about $40, and I can count 
out $200 a month that it takes to run that boy, and 
for the life of me he only gets $40 a month. One 
of that kind down South was having a big time 
with the girls, and the proprietor of the store he 
worked in found out what he was doing, and one 
day he caught him by the lapel of his coat, and 
said : " Look here, young fellow, where do you get 
all this money to foot these bills?" "My step- 
mother is sending it to me," whimpered the dude. 

Who ever heard of a step-mother sending a boy 
money ? I had the best step-mother this world ever 
saw, and she never sent me a cent in her life. Many 
a fellow in this country who says his step-mother is 
sending him the money, is doing some downright 
stealing, I tell you. If a fellow like that were to 



Watch Thou in all Things. 401 

come to my house and fall in love with a daughter 
of mine, and she with him, and she would some 
day ask me if she could marry him, I would in- 
quire : " Do you love that boy ? Are you going to 
marry him ? ^^ and if her reply were '^ Yes, sir," I 
should say : " Well, you had better hurry the thing 
up, for that young man is going to break into jail 
before he does into my family, and I do n't want 
you to be disgraced before marriage. '^ 

Some of these young fellows are having a big 
time, and some of you girls say : " O, my, is n't 
he perfectly irresistible? He's just exquisite !" I 
reckon you have reference to his perfume. That 
sort of a fellow is king of kings and lord always in 
some communities. Many a girl that marries a 
fellow like that does so at her own risk. I know 
one that married a fellow like that, and at the end 
of a year he had to leave town for something or 
other — they never knew what — and the poor girl 
looked sad and dejected for a long time afterwards. 
Girls, you take a terrible risk when you marry a 
fellow like this. 

Well, I '11 draw the reverse picture : Here 's a 
little fellow 17 years old ; he's got on a. wool cap 
and jeans clothes, but he 's a pious boy and goes to 
Sunday-school and Wednesday night prayer-meet- 
ings. He clerks on at that store, until by and by 
he 's put into some sort of a responsible position ; 
he belongs to the Church, is honest, and attends 
meetings regularly. One day I heard two girls 
talking as he passed, and one says : " Just look at 

that old thing now; isn't he a sight? He's the 

34 



402 Sermons and Sayings. 

worst thing I ever saw ; he belongs to the Church — 
he does, too ; he 's the strangest boy I ever saw ; 
look at that old hat he 's got ; why I would n't give 
a flip of my finger for a fellow of that sort.'' 

That fellow works on steadily, and he is pro- 
moted to book-keeper, and the next thing we hear 
of him he goes up into the country and marries 
Mary Smith, one of the plainest, most sensible girls 
in the whole settlement. They move into a little 
cottage ; the firm grows, and about ten years after- 
wards I see that young fellow's name at the head of 
the firm, and he's one of the strongest and best 
business men in the city, and he has built him a 
nice residence over here, and his wife is one of the 
best and purest women in the Church, and she 's a 
blessing to society ; and there they are, going on in 
grandeur and Christian beauty. You do n't have 
to ask that Mary Smith where her husband is. He 
wasn't one of those spider-legged dudes that ran 
away and left his wife. 

Girls, watch your associations. Watch in all 
things that pertain to righteousness, and make it 
the rule of your life to love God and live in har- 
mony with God and truth. Watch the company 
you keep, the associations you make, the kind of 
books you read. I will tell you books are your 
company. I hate to see a girl who reads nothing 
but dime novels. Some of these ten-cent-novel 
girls will read Dickens and cry as if their heart 
would break over Little Nell, but when they look 
out of the window and see a poor barefooted little 
girl with her feet nearly frozen in the cruel snow, 



Watch Thou in all Things. 403 

they won ^t shed a tear ; but they will cry like forty 
over Dickens^s Little Nell, and not over that starv- 
ing little child out there. The Lord have mercy on 
these people that can cry over ten-cent novels and 
not be moved by the terrible suffering about them. 

Balls ! I ^11 see your parents later on the sub- 
ject of ball-rooms. I want to tell them something 
that will reform them or make them mad — one or 
the other. Put that down. I am not here to ar- 
raign you ladies about playing cards. J. G. Hol- 
land said a big thing when he said '^ Cards is a 
game of starvelings, mentally and spiritually.^' 
That's a great big truth. God pity a home where 
more cards are played than any thing else. I wish 
you could have heard Mason Long or Steve Hol- 
comb, the two reformed gamblers, talk awhile. I 
declare to you it would make you go home and 
throw every card in the house into the fire, and be 
done with them forever. 

When I was preaching at Chattanooga, one after- 
noon, on the subject of cards, a mother and daugh- 
ter who were there went home and resolved to play 
cards no more, and they burnt up all the cards in 
the house. That evening, when the boy came home, 
he said : " Mother, let 's have a game.'' " No, son," 
said she ; " I have played my last game." Said 
the boy : ^' Sister, won't you play with me?" " No," 
said sister ; " I will never play with you again, and 
God forgive me for ever having played with you." 
The boy went to meeting, and was converted, and 
when he went home he said : " Mother, I 'm glad 
you burnt the cards. I will never play again." 



404 Sermons and Sayings. 

And the mother cried out: ^^ Thank God, son; 1^11 
try to be a better mother to you hereafter/^ 

I wish you could read the letters I get every 
day. I can read between the lines in some of them, 
and I can see that the person who writes me about 
the dear lost one is, or was, an instrument in the 
going astray of that person. Young ladies, let me 
say this to you : You have more power over your 
brothers than any body else, and if you start right 
at home you can redeem your brother, and he will 
thank God for a good sister. 

" Endure afflictions." O, how much we have to 
endure in this life ! I want to tell you, the test of 
character is how you carry the burdens of life. 
Sister, how much can you carry for your brother 
and daughter? How much can you carry for your 
poor mother ? O, daughters, hear me to-day. You 
will never know the burdens your poor mothers 
carry ; and let none of you do another thing to help 
break your mother's heart. Say, all of you : " I 
will unload my mother's heart ; I will help carry 
mother's burdens." When my poor wife is broken 
down with care and trouble, the proudest attitude 
my daughters can present towards me is to walk up 
under her burdens and say : " Mamma, you can 't 
carry them — we '11 carry them for you." Give me 
daughters that will help their mothers carry the bur- 
dens of life. 

Girls, you want to help your brothers, too ; and 
perhaps a wayward sister. You must do all to help 
you can. You will never know what mother is 
until you lose your precious mother, and you carry 



Watch Thou in All Things. 405 

some of the burdens of your precious mother. O, 
for daughters that are their mother's best friend ! 
for daughters that will walk under their mother's 
arm, and say, " Mother, use us for crutches. Be a 
burden to us instead of letting us be a burden to 
you.''- When you go home to-day look your mothers 
in the face and say : " Forgive me, mother ; I will 
carry your burdens in the future, instead of having 
you carry mine." 

" Watch thou in all things, and endure afflic- 
tion.'^ Wherever you see care on your mother's 
face run to her and say : " Mother, give me that 
care ; I will carry it for you." Some young women 
carry nothing for their mother. They trample on 
her best wishes and her tenderest graces. When 
their mother says " Do n't," they do. Of course, 
none of you here do that ; I ain't talking to you — 
I'm talking to the girl that isn't here. Your 
mother 's the best friend you 've got, and she knows 
what you ought to do and ought not to do ; and, 
girls, listen to your mother ; be guided by her. She 
cares enough for you to help you out of all trouble. 

" Do the work of an evangelist." Suppose the 
Lord had every noble girl in this town at work for 
him. If you would consecrate the rose on your 
cheek and the brightness of your eye, and the sweet- 
ness of your voice and the helpfulness of your hand, 
and make it the eifort of your life to live well and 
love God and keep his commandments — I wish thou- 
sands of times we had millions of daughters in this 
land who would do that. I heard once of a young 
woman whose father and mother were infidels and 



406 Sermons and Sayings. 

unbelievers, and when she was sent to college she 
had n't been there long before she was converted to 
God, and she wrote back home how sweetly Christ 
had forgiven her, and how she had turned her back 
on her previous life, and had turned her face to God 
and righteousness. The parents read this, and they 
said: " Why, daughter has taken up with that foolish 
thing, but we '11 soon wean her from it ;" and when 
she was about to return to her home they prepared 
all sorts of amusements, and balls, and dances, and 
parties, in order to distract her from her religion, 
and make her forget her God in the excitement of 
the worldly things about her. When she returned 
they tried to make her renounce her religion, but 
it was in vain ; so, at last, in their exasperation, 
they bade her go to her room and put on a poor 
sun-bonnet and a calico dress and march out of the 
gate, an outcast forever and disinherited, unless she 
would say she would renounce her religion. She 
turned about, and put on her sun-bonnet and calico 
dress, and walked down and kissed her mother 
and father, and walked away with this sweet 
song on her voice : 

" Jesus, I my cross have taken, 
All to leave and follow thee ; 
Naked, poor, despised, forsaken. 
Thou froru hence my all shalt be." 

If we had Christian girls like that we could 
take this world and redeem it. Girls, consecrate 
your charms, your voice, your all, to redeeming 
the race and bringing the world to God ; act as the 



Watch Thou in All Things. 407 

evangelist going out into the West, and do your 
duty to the last. 

" Make full proof of your ministry.'' Girls, it 
is generally understood that almost all young ladies 
will sooner or later find a beau, and marry. Let 
me tell you this right along here : In Georgia there 
were four or five girls pitched in and married the 
same number of young fellows, who were drunk- 
ards. They made it up : " We '11 marry these fel- 
lows and redeem them." They did marry the boys, 
and about three years after that, when I was down 
in that section, I saw more little saddened whip- 
poorwill widows in that town than I ever saw in my 
life before. They were the palest, saddest widows 
I ever saw. 

Girls, do n't marry drunkards. Better be led to 
the stake and burned to death by the inch than do 
that. Whenever a young man comes into your 
parlor with liquor on his breath, you turn him 
right around, and say : ^^ Off these premises, sir ; I 
would n't countenance you, sir, any more than I 
would a rattlesnake." A girl who will sit in a 
parlor and talk to a man with whisky on his breath 
will, may be, some day marry a man like that — and 
the finest specimen of a fool in this world is a woman 
that marries a man when she knows he has been 
drinking. 

Across this river below here, in Henry County, 
seventeen years ago, I married a girl, and when she 
married me she knew I drank, and it was against 
the wishes of her parents; but she married me, 
though, and in three short years that woman's heart 



408 Sermons and Sayings. 

suffered more than angePs tongue could tell, and 
she says she will never get through praising God 
for saving her husband ; that it was a miracle. 
Nothing but a miracle can save a drinking man, 
girls. 

Girls, be careful. Do n't let a man come into 
your presence with his breath smelling of beer or 
whisky. IM rather be five hundred old maids 
shut up in one room than be the wife of one drunk- 
ard. There are thousands of things worse than 
old maidhood, and if you can never have company 
except drunken boys you 'd better die an old maid. 
That 's what I say. I know what it is. 

^' Make full proof of your ministry. '^ Map out 
a line of conduct and follow it until results shall 
show for themselves what can be done. 

What more could I have said, girls? I could 
have taken a text that would have led me out into 
saying some nice things and some pretty things; 
but, girls, let me tell you that sort of business is^n't 
the thing. We want solid things for food. We 
want meat and greens. We want to quit these light 
things that will give us the dyspepsia. I want to 
talk plain and practical words to you, and I have 
talked to you as I would want a preacher to talk to 
my daughters when they come to hear him. I hope 
you will pray for me, and when you are grown up 
and married, and meet me in after years, I hope 
you will grasp my hand and say : ^^ Mr. Jones, I 
followed the line of thought you talked on that day 
at Music Hall, in Cincinnati, and I have endured 
afSiction, and I 'm the better for it.'' 



Skrivion XX. 

<rROUBl>E^ IVLAOHINKS.— IIMAGINARY AND 
RKAL». 

" He hath delivered my soul in peace from the battle 
that was against me, for there were many with me. . . . Cast 
thy burden upon the Lord and he shall sustain thee ; he 
shall never suffer the righteous to be moved." — Psalm lv, 
18, 22. 

*'/^^AST thy burden upon the Lord." I suppose 
v> the greatest curiosity this world could pre- 
sent to mortal gaze would be an unburdened human 
heart, a heart perfectly free from all care, all 
anxiety, and all trouble and disappointment. Four 
thousand years ago a man of God said that man is 
born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward. Just 
as naturally as the sparks ascend from the burning 
wood, so naturally is man born unto trouble. 

After all, my brethren, it is not the part of a 
philosopher to sit down and number and weigh and 
measure his troubles, but first, to classify them, and 
then know what to do with each class. Now, there 
are what we denominate real troubles, and then 
there are what we call imaginary troubles. Poor 
human nature, how weak, how frail it is ! We are 
always looking around for something we are never 
going to see. We are always expecting something 
that's never going to happen. We are always 
going out to meet something that isn't coming. 
Poor human nature! Now, it is wise for us to stop 

35 409 



410 Sermons and Sayings. 

and consider the two classes. That is all-important. 
All troubles and all burdens may be classified under 
these two general heads — imaginary trouble and 
real trouble. 

I will show what I mean by imaginary trouble 
by an illustration. You We seen a mother — one of 
those good, kind, careful mothers, indulgent to her 
children. Well, belonging to a family where there 
was just such a mother, there was a noble, gentle 
horse ; he was widely known in the community for 
his gentleness, and was called " Old John.^^ The 
old horse fairly loved the children in his equine 
way. Why, they could go down in the lot and 
fairly climb all over him without a fear of being 
hurt. They could play about on the green sward 
about him, and old John would walk around them, 
and it seemed as if when he put his hoof down he 
shook it as though to make sure that none of the 
little fellows were under it. Really, old John loved 
the children. He was a sensible old horse. He 
was more sensible in some things than was this 
mother I refer to. 

One day the mother, in answer to the children's 
desire, said : " You may hitch up old John and 
drive out to Mrs. So-and-so's ; but, children, be 
sure and come back by four o'clock." The children 
assented to the proposition, hitched up old John 
and drove away. By- and -by the clock struck four. 
The mother listened to the clock, and when she 
saw the hands point to four she went to the door 
and looked, and when she didn't see the children 
she said : " Why, those children were to be back by 



Trouble Machines. 411 

four o'clock, and they never deceived me before. I 
wonder what 's the matter with them. I 'm satisfied 
something has happened.^' She waits five minutes, 
and then she looks out of the window and says : 
" O, how foolish I was for letting those children 
drive that horse off. I remember now that the 
other day when I drove old John down the road 
he took a fearful fright, and I said then, ' Those 
children shall never drive that horse again.' Then 
again it hasn't been more than two weeks since I 
had that terrible presentiment that that horse was 
going to run away and kill every child I had.'' 

She then began to walk up and down the floor, 
towards the door first and then back to the fire- 
place, and she kept this up until directly her hus- 
band came in, and he said : " Why, wife, you seem 
to be in another stew about something. What's 
the matter ?" '' Why," said she, " I let those chil- 
dren drive old John off, and they were to be back 
by four o'clock, and you know, husband, those 
children never told me a story in their life. They 
never did, and now here it is fifteen minutes after 
four and they have n't come in yet. Husband, the 
last time I drove old John he took a fearful fright, 
and I said then I 'd never let those children drive 
that horse off." The husband said ; " O, wife, hush. 
You 're in one of your stews. The children will be 
here directly." " No, I ain't in a stew, and it was 
no longer ago than last week that I had that 
terrible presentiment as clear as the sun that 
that horse was going to run away and kill every 
child I had." " O, wife," said the husband, " that 



412 Sermons and Sayings. 

was something you ate. There is nothing in pre- 
sentiments/' She then said : ^' I want you to get 
your hat right away and go and look after those 
children. I know every one of them is killed by 
this time.'' " O, hush," said her husband, " they '11 
be here directly." " Husband," she says, " if you 
do n't go right away I '11 go myself," and he knows 
what that means, and he moves out, and he just 
about gets to the bottom step of the front porch, 
and about the time his foot strikes the pavement 
here comes old John jogging up, with all the chil- 
dren safe, and mother looks out the door and she 
sees the children, with their faces all alight with joy 
at their visit, and old John standing there, as faith- 
ful as life, and she walks off into her room, and as 
she sits down in her chair she buries her face in 
her hands, and says : " O, what a goose I 've been." 
Brethren, she was, too. 

Sister, you are n't by yourself in this matter — I 
wish you were. There 's that brother yonder. Many 
a night he's gone home tired with the labor of the 
day, and instead of going to bed and sleeping like 
an honest laboring man, or like a thinking man, he 
goes to bed and rolls and tumbles all night, to the 
annoyance to every body in the house. He's try- 
ing to make the buckle and tongue meet ! You 've 
heard about that, have n't you ? " Many a time," 
says he, " I 've been in a tight place, but this is the 
tightest place I ever was in in my life. The fact 
of the business is, I believe I '11 be sold out by the 
sheriff and will be driven off to the pauper-house, 
and I and my family will just have to die there. 



Trouble Machines. 413 

There ^s no use in talking, I can 't live now. The 
wolf 's at the door, and starvation 's at hand." 

This man, brethren, runs his trouble machine 
" most principally," as the darkey says, at night when 
he ought to be asleep. He starts his machine, and it 
just runs the whole night. Look here, brethren, 
r ve had about as much trouble in my life as any 
of you ever had, but I never took any more trouble 
to bed with me than I could kick off at one lick 
and go to sleep. I go to bed to sleep, and when I 
go to bed at night I want to wake up refreshed and 
be able to run my machine in the daytime. I'm 
never going to lay my head down on a pillow and 
lie there in the dark trying to work out the prob- 
lems of life. I '11 take the great issues of my life 
in the daytime when my mind is clear, and at night 
when I go to bed I want to sleep. 

The worried brain, the fevered look, and nervous 
tread of many a man in this town tell too plainly that 
there 's a man who has been working out the prob- 
lems of life up to one, two, and three o'clock, in- 
stead of being asleep. I like the idea of that 
fellow, who, when a man was walking about in the 
room overhead at the hotel, and he could n't go to 
sleep until about two o'clock, got up and went up 
stairs and said to the occupant of the room, " Look 
here, my friend, I can 't get to sleep with you pacing 
up and down the floor all night. What 's the matter 
with you?" "Why," said the fellow, "I owe 
$10,000, and it 's due to-morrow, and I have done 
my best, but I can 't get the money." " Have you 
done your best?" inquired the fellow from below. 



414 Seemons and Sayings. 

" Yes, I 've done my very best/' replied the man. 
"Well, then, you go and get into that bed and go 
to sleep, and let the other fellow do the walking. 
He's the one to be troubled now.'' 

That 's my doctrine, brethren ; when I 've done 
my best, the other fellow can do the walking from 
that time on ! When I 've done my best, I 'm go- 
ing to be like the fellow I heard of in Chicago, 
who went bankrupt for |300,000, and another fellow 
stopped him on the street and wanted to condole 
with him, and the man said : " Friend, you need n't 
sympathize with me ; it 's my creditors that need 
your sympathy." I'm going to be scrupulous and 
do my best, but at the same time, when I 've done 
my best, I am going to bed at night and I 'm going 
to sleep then. 

A home-made trouble machine ! Did you ever 
see one? It is something like the old-fashioned 
loom the sisters used to work in the old times. 
I 've seen the old sisters many a time weaving with 
one ; they had a shuttle in both hands, a broche in 
their mouth, and they were everlastingly treading 
with their feet ; why, they had to work all over, 
through and through ! And I 've seen many an old 
sister start her trouble machine and work it from 
head to foot as hard as she could go it. What's 
the use of doing that? 

Look here, brethren, there's but one remedy in 
the universe of God for borrowed trouble, home- 
made trouble. I do n't like this home-made trouble 
on this account. It's just like the old-fashioned 
home-made cloth and the old-fashioned home-made 



Trouble Machines. 415 

shoes — they outwear any thing you ever saw. But, 
O me, how we stick to it, and run this old trouble 
machine. I Ve said this much only that you might 
see the point I am driving at. Listen, friends, 
there 's but one remedy in the universe of God for 
home-made trouble, and that ^s the exercise of your 
good hard sense^ and if you have any, use it for 
yourself! What do you say? You needn't go to 
the Lord with your borrowed trouble. Just think 
of the mother asking the Lord to head off old 
John before he ran away. The Lord won't do it 
while John isn't running off. 

Just think of a sister asking the Lord to put 
out the fire in her house, and the house is n't even 
on fire yet ! The Lord is n't going to bother about 
putting out a fire when the fire hasn't started yet. 
It 's all tomfoolery to go to the Lord with borrowed 
troubles and ask him to relieve you. If the wolf is 
at the door, shut the door in his face ; and if the 
calf is going to eat up the grindstone, why let him 
eat it. You can get a new one ! This everlasting 
ding-dong and worry over nothing ! looking for 
something that 's never going to happen ; expecting 
something that'll never come about, everlastingly 
going out to meet something that is not coming! 
Brethren, let 's quit that ! 

My brethren, it 's this borrowed trouble that 
harasses us in this life. I've been traveling about 
in the last few years a good deal, and I 've read of 
people that starved to death, but I never yet saw 
the body of a man that died of starvation. Did 
any body in this house ever see the body of a man 



416 Sermons and Sayings. 

that died of starvation in this country ? Why, if 
the low-down vagabonds of this country can live, 
and look fat and sleek, I know for certain a gentle- 
man like you and me can get along! Let^s quit 
bothering about those things, brethren. It 's a good 
idea, too ! Why, you take these old tramps out on 
the road, and they carry about one hundred and 
sixty pounds of avoirdupois flesh around with 'em, 
and they look fat and sleek, and if these old vaga- 
bonds can do this, a decent fellow had better hush 
up and go along, and do the best he can and say 
nothing. 

This everlasting worry ! I We seen the time my- 
self when the meal in my house got pretty low, and 
coal gave out, and things did look like starvation, 
but I went on doing my duty, and I said, '' If I 
do starve to death in this country, I '11 make out as 
if I died of typhoid fever.'' Sister, brother, quit 
that worry ! Why, some good wives are the laughing 
stock of their husbands, and some mothers are the 
laughing stock of their children ! Sisters, play the 
woman and use good hard sense, and quit this fool- 
ishness. Yes, you need n't be nudging your wife, 
brother, out there. I suspect when she gets home 
you '11 hear from her. 

Now you 've got, brethren, the general idea of 
what I mean by borrowed trouble. Bring your 
good hard sense to bear and let these things go, and 
don't worry about 'em, and don't you go out to 
meet any thing that isn't pleasant. You just sit 
still and wait till it comes, and then fight it until 
you die. 



Trouble Machines. 417 

But, brethren, there are real troubles and real 
burdens in this life, as well as imaginary ones. 
There is enough real and genuine trouble in this 
life without your sitting down and manufacturing 
more. The real burdens of life ! O, how many 
there are here to-night whose hearts ache. O, how 
many suffering hearts in this house to-night are 
carrying more than angePs strength could bear. O, 
sister and brother, but with that burden comes a 
sweet message from God, "Bring it back to me." 
See that Newfoundland dog swimming in the lake 
out yonder. His master calls him, but he won't 
come ; his master beckons him, but he won't come ; 
his master rebukes him, but he swims around at 
will ; but his master picks up a little block of 
wood and pitches it out into the lake toward the 
dog, and the dog swims up to it, and gathers it in 
his mouth, and swims ashore and lays the block at 
his master's feet. If there is a burden on your 
heart, it was pitched there by a hand divine ; God 
called you, but you would n't come ; God beckoned 
to you, but you would n't come. You 're swimming 
at will out yonder in the lake of sin and death, and 
he pitches this burden on your heart, and he says, 
" Bring it back and lay it down at my feet. I am 
the great burden-bearer." 

The burdens of life! There's a burden of guilt 
that weighs upon the human soul ! Who has not felt 
it? O, guilty before God. How many men are 
standing here to-night, and their very soul echoes 
it out, " Guilty, guilty before God ! I have sinned 
against God with a high hand ! " The burden of 



418 Sermons and Sayings. 

guilt ! I have felt it ; I have had ray soul -pressed 
down with the load of guilt. Brother, I trust to- 
night your burden may brush down upon your 
heart and break it into ten thousand pieces ! God 
will not despise a broken heart. " A broken and 
a contrite heart, O, God, thou wilt not despise ! ^^ 
Guilt ! I have sinned ! I have sinned ! 

This burden of guilt in the case of Judas Iscariot 
caused him to rush out to the brink of a fearful 
precipice to make a hangman^s noose, and in his 
despair and agony, to kill himself! O, how many 
men have committed suicide from this one cause — 
a burden of guilt ! " Guilty when I look at the 
past; crushed with the present, hopeless for the 
future V and then the bright blade enters the bared 
left breast, and the life-blood comes gushing out in 
a dark red stream from the heart ! Guilty ! Guilty ! 
The burden of guilt ! O, brother, there is a remedy 
for you. There is a place of refuge for you to go. 
Thank God that in this old world, loaded with the 
burdens of guilt, there is a place ^vhere you may 
go and cast your burden down, and come away 
singing, and rejoice and rest in God our Savior. 

There is no such thing there as exchanging bur- 
dens. I reckon I have had trouble nobody else 
has had ; but I would n't swap it off. If I have to 
bear burdens and troubles, God has fitted them to 
me, so that I can carry them better than any body 
else can. I remember well the old legend, where a 
mythological goddess is represented as calling all 
the inhabitants of the ^vorld together, that they 
might throw their burdens, or troubles, or infirmi- 



Trouble Machines. 419 

ties, into a pile. Well, they all gathered round 
and commenced pitching into the pile their diffi- 
culties. One fellow had an evil conscience, another 
had a burden of guilt, another had a crook in his 
nose, another had a broken arm, another had a bad 
eye, and every man that had an ailment of any 
kind he cast it into the common pile; and when 
they had all thrown in their troubles, and defects, 
and infirmities, it made a pile mountains high. The 
goddess then told them that each one could pick 
something out of the pile that would suit him 
better than the trouble or burden he had pitched 
in, and each one then made his selection. The man 
with the evil conscience took the crooked nose ; 
the man with an aching heart took a broken arm, 
and each of them changed and got something that 
they thought he would rather have instead of the 
one he had pitched into the pile. But the next 
morning before sun-up the whole concern from 
bottom to top was back there telling the goddess to 
call another day of celebration, and give them an 
opportunity to swap back, and give them what they 
had before. Well, that's some consolation for a 
fellow — I would rather have what I have than what 
you -have. We are rich in that sense. Well, we 
can swap those things off. What will we do with 
them ? I carry this burden of guilt to my Savior's 
feet and throw it down. " Cast thy burdens on the 
Lord.'' 

There's a burden of anxiety. O, who knows 
what that mother's heart bears? If any man, 
woman or child were to overhaul the letters I have 



420 Sermons and Sayings. 

received since I have been in this city, and were to 
read the letters, and messages, and requests I have 
read — O, brother, you would know then what burdens 
of anxiety rest on the hearts of many people in Cin- 
cinnati. You would know then w^hat it is to ache 
from head to foot because of the fearful falsehood 
of another. 

Boys, let me talk to you a minute. Mother has 
got enough to care for you, my boy. But a 
precious mother can not stand every thing; a 
precious wife can not stand every thing. I was 
visiting the asylum in my State a year or two ago, 
and I went through the different wards. I met 
mothers; I met wives; and I looked into the face 
of what was once a lovely, sw^eet mother ; and I 
saw the distorted look of the countenance and the 
wild glare of her eye, and I asked mentally the 
question : " What brought that mother here — what 
tore her from her children and her home?" And 
the wild glare of the eye, as it looked back to me, 
spoke with more force than any tongue, and said : 
" Trouble did this ; trouble did this ; trouble did it.'^ 

I know a wife in the State of Georgia, in the 
asylum of that State, and the besotted, drunken, 
beastly conduct of her husband first broke her heart, 
and then broke her mind, and she is to-day a poor 
distorted maniac. What did it, wives ? It was a 
husband's brutal treatment. God pity a man that 
mistreats his wife. Brother, she has left father and 
mother, and home and all, to be yours. She is 
yours in all the simplicity and sincerity of her 
heart — yours to love, and cherish, and to keep, so 



Teouble Machines. 421 

long as you both shall live ; but never yours to 
abuse and mistreat, and to crush her precious, lov- 
ing heart. O, brother, God help us. I love to 
throw my arm around my precious wife's neck occa- 
sionally, and say : " Wife, I must ask you one more 
time to forgive me for the way I used to do in my 
wayward life.'' And before the angels of God in 
heaven I want the privilege at least of begging her 
pardon for the wayward life I led the first three 
years of our married life. Brother, listen. You owe 
your precious wife a debt you can never pay until 
you pay it at the mercy-seat of God. Boys, you 
owe your mother a debt, and you can never pay it 
until you pay it on your knees, crying out : ^^ God 
be merciful to me a sinner." Won't you cry out 
to-night ? 

A burdened heart! I don't intend to burden 
any body's heart. Every body has as much as he 
can carry, has as much as he can go with. I won't 
be a burden upon any body's heart. I would n't 
inflict a burden upon any human heart. Why, 
wives have written to me about their husbands : 
" Mr. Jones, intimate from the pulpit that husbands 
ought not to be unkind to their wives. Mr. Jones, 
say something from the pulpit to touch a boy's 
heart that has already broken a poor mother's 
heart." O, boys, let us stop to-night ! Let us stop 
to-night ! And let us say : " God being my helper, 
I will never burden my loved one's hearts any 
longer." 

There are the burdens of grief. O, how they 
press upon us! Who of us have made a pilgrim- 



422 Sermons and Sayings. 

age to the grave? The black crape in this house 
every day tells in burning letters of pilgrimages to 
the graveyard. Husband gone ! wife gone ! child 
gone ! O, those loved ones who are gone ! I buried 
one of my sweet loved ones, and she was the only 
one we had at our home. My house was never so 
dark before. O, how I walked to her little bed- 
room, and how T would take up her little doll and 
her little playthings, and handle them with all the 
sacredness of my nature. And how I have taken 
up her little shoes and stockings in my hand, and 
I have regarded them as worth all the world to my 
home. A precious one gone ! gone ! gone ! O, 
what a burden! 

I know not what it is to give a wife up. I hope 
I shall never know. I hope I shall never know. 
I know not what it is to give up a grown child. 
But, brother, these burdens come in life; and O, 
what burdens! O, what burdens! And then, 
brother, there are thousands of burdens rushing in 
upon us. The burden of grief, the burden of dis- 
appointment, the burden of anxiety, the burden of 
losses — O, how they press down upon us ! O, this 
burden-laden world ! What can you do ? What 
ought you to do? That's the question. 

I was reading this incident some days ago, where 
a dozen women were sitting in a parlor rehearsing 
their troubles : One after another told her troubles, 
until eleven had spoken, and a pale, sad face pres^ 
ent had not spoken a word. They turned to her 
and said: "Tell us what your troubles are?'' And 
she said: "I have listened to you all, and joxx 



Teouble Machines. 423 

know nothing of what troubles are. I will tell you 
mine, since you have asked for them : I was raised 
in affluence and wealth ; so was my husband. After 
we were married he bought a beautiful place on 
the Savannah Eiver, and there we lived in our 
beautiful home, and in the course of years God 
blessed us with four children. One night I awoke 
in my room, and I dropped my hand out of the 
bed, and it dropped into water. I awoke my hus- 
band, and he arose. The water was already a foot 
deep above the floor, and my husband gathered 
myself and the children, and carried us to a small 
raft near by; and the water rose very rapidly. 
And my husband said : * I will take you and the 
baby first to the hillside, and then come back for 
the other children.' My husband carried us over, 
and then went back ; and, as the moon was shining 
upon the flood, the raft was carried away, and my 
husband sank out of sight, and I have never seen 
him since. But,^^ she said, *^ that wasn't trouble. 
I saw the waters rise and carry my three-year-old 
child out of sight, and I have never seen it since ; 
but that was n't trouble." And she said : " I saw 
the water rise above the head of the next, and it 
struggled and passed out of sight. And then I sat 
there until the water had risen above the head of 
my first born, and I saw him swept away. But," 
she said, "that wasn't trouble. I was left a widow 
with just one little boy in my arms. I spent my 
whole life trying to rear him right. I sent him 
off to college. There he learned to dissipate ; and 
when he was sent home he was fearfully dissipated. 



424 Sermons and Sayings. 

He spent all my means, and went from bad to 
worse ; and I Ve just received letters and papers 
from Texas announcing the fact that my poor boy 
was hung upon the gallows, and died a criminal's 
death, and went to a criminal's grave and to a crim- 
inal's hell." And she said : ^^ O, ladies, there is 
trouble that no human heart can bear." 

Boys, if you are going to the bad, remember 
that you are breaking a poor mother's heart; and, 
while you dissipate, think of a precious sister at 
home, a precious mother at home, and quit forever. 
Boys, let 's be a comfort to our mother at home ; 
let 's be a consolation to our mother. Husbands, 
be the pride of your wives' hearts and a consola- 
tion to them all the day long. Won't you ? If 
there were nothing else in religion than just some- 
thing to take a burden off a wife's heart, I would 
want it for that. I bless God for the other ten 
thousand things, but for this particularly, because 
he has been such a blessing to me in saving me to 
my precious wife. God bless you, brother. He 
will do the same to you. He will ! He will ! 

"Cast your burden upon the Lord." O, these 
troubles ; they come upon us. You see that little 
frail bark yonder starting across the ocean. It 
reaches mid-ocean, and the wind blows, and the 
waves beat, and the storm tosses this little frail 
bark, and it is about to go down forever. It is 
overloaded, and it can 't carry its cargo. And just 
at that time the Great Eastern, the grandest vessel 
that ever plowed the Atlantic — that grand ocean 
steamer that looks like a little floating city — that 



Trouble Machines. 425 

grand old vessel comes right up to the side of the 
little frail bark, and the captain walks up to the 
bulwark and looks over and says : ^^ You are over- 
loaded; cast your cargo on me. I will carry it 
safely through for you.'' With rope and tackle 
they toss their cargo up on the deck of the Gi^eat 
Eastern, and it does n't make any more impression on 
it than a fly on an elephant. 

Brothers, young men, you are out on the sea of 
life, poor humanity overloaded, and the wind and 
the waves and the storm dip and toss your frail 
little bark, overloaded with sin, and sinking and 
going down. But just about that time the old ship 
of Zion, with Jesus Christ as its captain, plows right 
alongside, and he says : " You are overloaded ; cast 
your burden on me." And with all our power we 
cast our burden on the grand old ship of Zion. It 
doesn't sink her. It is out on mid-ocean all the 
time, hunting these frail little barks. God bless 
you as you to-night feel you may go down forever ! 
Look out, and you can feel the impulse of the grand 
old ship plowing up to your side to-night. And if 
she does, then cast your burden on her. Blessed 
be God ! He will not only carry our burden, but 
carry us, too. 

Thank God for the cross. I have shouldered my 
cross, sometimes, when I thought it the biggest bur- 
den I had to carry, and I have carried that cross 
until it was more than I could carry, and I fell 
down ; but as soon as I fell down God put legs to 
the cross, and he put me on it, and he said. It shall 
carry you now. Blessed be God for the cross that 

36 



426 Sermons and Sayings. 

was a burden once, and yet carries you safely into 
the haven of God. 

Now, brother, what are you going to do ? Cast 
your burden on the Lord ? Mother, there is where 
you put your burden to-night. Wife, put yours 
there. Young lady, put your burden there. What- 
ever our burdens are let^s cast them on the Lord 
to-night. Let us go away from here with our bur- 
den cast upon the Lord. He will hold you fast ; 
and, when the last storm is sweeping over you, he 
will keep you secure. I do n't care what your bur- 
den of troubles is to-night. God says : " Cast it 
upon me, and I will sustain you.'' 

And now a word or two on this verse and I am 
done. " He hath delivered my soul in peace from 
the battle that was against me." Did you ever 
think about that expression ? " For there were many 
with me." Ah, me ! I have seen this illustrated 
so many times. I have seen the precious old heart- 
broken mother, when her boys had gone to the 
bad, and patiently she came up to me and said, "I 
will have to give my boys up forever; I have 
prayed for them every day from their birth to the 
present time ; I have followed them with my pray- 
ers; and at night when they were asleep I have 
bathed them in my tears; and yet one of my boys 
to-day said to me, ^ Mother, do n't you never men- 
tion religion to me again,' and scoffed me away 
from his presence." And she said, '^ I will just 
have to give up and quit." And the verj'^ next 
night I saw the two boys of that precious mother 
walk up to the altar and give their hearts to God 



Trouble Machines. 427 

join the Churchi and say, " Glory to God, I am a 
saved man !'' And then I saw the old mother jump 
up and clap her hands together, and say, " Glory to 
God, he has delivered my soul in peace from the 
battle that was against me. I thought my boys 
were gone forever ; and, blessed be God, they are 
saved, when I thought they were lost forever." 

I have seen a wife pray for her husband, while 
he went to the bad. And I have heard my own 
precious wife say, "I am broken down with the 
burden ; I will have to give it up." She was about 
to give it all up in despair when God swept me into 
the kingdom of Chi-ist, and I said, " Glory to God ! 
He has delivered my soul in peace from the battle 
that was against me." I thought I had to give up 
in despair, but about that time he brought me into 
victory, and now I shout over victories unknown to 
men. Many a man has been ready to give up and 
has been on the verge of despair, but about that 
time some providential influence came along and 
swept him into the Church, which he thought he 
would never reach. Many a time the old brethren 
have gathered together and thought the Church had 
about reached its end ; thought they were not doing 
any good, and about the time they were ready to 
give up along came some influence and swept 
hundreds and hundreds into the Church, and the 
old brethren clapped their hands and cried out, 
^^ Glory to God ! He hath delivered our souls from 
the battle that was against us." 

There are thousands of Christian people that 
have cried out about Cincinnati, " O this city has 



428 Sermons and Sayings. 

gone to the bad. She has three thousand bar-rooms. 
Wickedness exists on nearly every block. O, how 
she is steeped in guilt and wickedness, and com- 
munism and dormant riot/^ and the good men of 
the city have looked on and said, ^' O, Cincinnati 
is gone. With all our prayers and all our efforts 
and all our preaching, Cincinnati is going to the 
bad." And just about the time you were all about 
to give up along comes some influence and starts 
the whole city to God, and I hope before this time 
next week we can clap our hands together and say, 
"Glory to God! This city is restored to Christ. 
They 're flocking home to Christ by the hundreds 
and thousands.^' 

I'll never desert this grand old ship of Zion; 
I 'm aboard, and I 'm going to stay. Many a man 
has given up and despaired of ever being a good 
member, and has asked me, when I was pastor, to 
take his name off the book ; but, brother, I 'd never 
let you take your name off. I never felt sadder in 
my life than when a man came to me and wanted 
me to take his name off the Church books. Many 
a man has wanted his name stricken off, but he was 
rescued at the last moment. Many a time have I 
gone to a town and worked and worked, but all 
seemed against me; the preachers would not sym- 
pathize with me, and even my wife, I thought, was 
against me, and my children seemed to be against 
me; but I fought, and fought, and fought, and I 
thought I fell, and I said, " I am conquered for- 
ever,'' but blessed be God, when I opened my eyes 
the din and the smoke of the terrible battle had 



Teouble Machines. 429 

been wafted away, and angels and good men were 
all about me, and I said, " Glory to God ! I am 
not alone/^ I thought I was alone in the fight. 
^ Sister, brother, men, listen to-night. You can 't 
go out alone to fight the battle of right — God won^t 
let you. He will make angels pitch their tents 
around you, and make the good men of earth stand 
by you, and God himself will be your friend. 
Glory to God, you don't go by yourself! If the 
devil says you are too weak to walk or start, tell 
him God is with you. 

Brethren, let us all start that way to-night. 
Let 's start a better life, and if you do start to-night 
God will be with you. He will help you fight the 
battle. 

SAYINQS. 

I WISH some of these pastors could see that men 
never can be saved by pastoral visits. I do n't 
want my pastor to go fooling around my house two 
or three times a week in my wife's way, and in my 
children's way. I want him to study the source of 
life and truth, and then on Sunday preach a sermon 
that will set their souls on fire for the week. Then 
I do n't care whether he calls around or not. If 
shoeleather will ever save this world, the Lord knows 
the visiting pastors have worn out enough already 
to save the whole world. Give us a Gospel of truth 
and sense. Give us a Gospel that means the con- 
quest of the world by bringing men into contact 
with truth. 



Skrmon XXI. 

<rHK OAI>I>S OK GOD. 

" Because I have called, and ye refused ; I have stretched 
out my hand, and no man regarded ; but ye have set at 
nought all my counsel and would none of my reproof ; I also 
will laugh at your calamity ; I will mock when your fear 
Cometh."— Prov. i, 24-26. 

THESE are the words of God our Father, our 
Benefactor, and the God who will be our final 
Judge. 

If we were wise men and wise women in the 
best sense, I might stop the pulpit part of these 
services now, and instead of inviting penitents into 
the inquiry rooms, we might turn this whole 
audience-room into an inquiry-room, and the best 
of us would start out to be better, and the medium 
class, morally speaking, would make an immense 
movement forward, and religious altogethcjr seek and 
obtain the pardon and blessing of God to-night. 

" Because I have called. '^ Whatever else we 
may say of the representations of God's relation 
toward us, we all must admit — all Bible readers 
must admit — that this world of men are in danger of 
something, and that the Lord is doing his best to 
save men from the danger and death that threatens 
them ; and now we propose, practically, with your 
prayers, and with the help of God, to go into the 
question before us. Give us your attention if you 
are not a Christian, and give us your prayers if you 
are a Christian. 
430 



The Calls of God. 431 

First, we notice the numerous calls given of God 
to men. The first great influence or agency in 
calling men to a better life is the third person of 
the adorable Trinity, which is the blessed Spirit of 
all grace. Sometimes I think we magnify the 
work of the Holy Ghost too little in the great work 
of redemption. Jesus Christ, the Savior of man, 
came, and suffered, and died, but the suffering and 
death of Christ would have been of no effect but for 
the divine agency and power of the Holy Ghost. 

Really, brethren, when we think lightly on this 
question we can never understand the cross, we can 
never see the cross in its beauty and outlines until 
it is bathed in the light of the Divine Spirit. I 
have walked out in the mountainous regions of my 
own State, an hour before daybreak ; I have stood 
on the porch of some country home and looked at 
the hills and valleys around me ; they presented 
but the dim outline of something that I could not 
appreciate, that I could not fully see. I go back 
into that dwelling, and in three hours more I walk 
out again on the front porch. The sun has risen 
on the scene, and bathed the mountains and valleys 
in a sea of light, and now I look, and beauties and 
splendors that never met my eye before face me on 
every side. The light of the sun shows me the 
beauties of the world, and helps me to understand 
largely its mysteries. Brethren, I see the cross 
erected, God's only begotten Son, the victim, sus- 
pended; he suffers, he dies, and now I see but the 
dim outlines of something — I can not catch it in its 
fullness, I can not take it in in all its beauty, but 



432 Sermons* and Sayings. 

now the Divine Spirit rises on the scene, and bathes 
the cross in a sea of light, and I see my Savior in 
a beauty and power I have never seen before. 

Blessed Spirit, live in our world and draw all 
men to Christ. This Holy Spirit is working in the 
world, and is touching and moving the hearts and 
consciences of men. I am so glad of the divine 
agency of the blessed Spirit ! It was so good in God 
to love me in my wayward life. It was so good for 
Christ to die for me, and spend thirty-three years 
among those that lived before me. It was so good 
in Christ to ascend to the Father, for he said : ^^ It 
is expedient for you that I go away ;" and when he 
entered the shining courts above the blessed Spirit 
poised himself a moment, and listened as his lips 
uttered : " The work is finished among men in 
sacrificial atonement," and then he flew to earth to 
sprinkle the nations, and make them meet for the 
Master's use in heaven. O, brother, this divine 
agency is in our world to-night. This would indeed 
be a fatherless, a comfortless, and a starless world 
without the ever-abiding God manifesting his 
presence and his power. 

It was glorious to Mary and Martha to have 
Christ their guest. When Christ was with them 
he was not out in the street unstopping the ear 
of the deaf and giving eyes to the blind. When he 
was in the home of Mary and Martha they had him 
all to themselves. But here is this Divine Spirit. 
When I bid wife and children good-bye, and walk 
out of my home, I leave the Divine Spirit with 
them, and when I board the train for some distant 



The Calls of God. 433 

point, the blessed Spirit rides over these railways 
with me ; and wherever I come I find that same 
Spirit abiding in the hearts of the people. Blessed 
be God for this Spirit of grace that dwells not only 
in the world, but in the hearts of men. 

This divine Spirit is here to-night, and his busi- 
ness here is to woo and beseech and implore every 
man to give his heart to God and lead a good life. 
Brethren, can you say as you look over the past and 
as you survey the present, ''No good spirit has 
touched my heart; no divine power has moved my 
conscience?'' This light and this power lighteth 
every man that cometh into the world. We are 
warned at this point, brethren, to grieve not the 
Holy Spirit of God, whereby we are sealed to the day 
of redemption. We are taught that this sin, if we 
commit it persistently, is a sin for which there is no 
forgiveness in this world or in the world to come. 

It is that Spirit touching your heart yesterday, 
to-day, and to-night, and have you not in your soul 
a desire to be a better man? Every good desire 
and ever hungering for better things, is implanted 
and touched into life in the hearts of men by this 
Spirit of grace. O, how fearful and guilty we are 
to trifle with this blessed Spirit, this Spirit that 
comes back and implores us to lead a better life. 
God not only gave us his Son to die for us, but he 
let this divine Spirit abide among men to lead them 
to a better life. 

I have seen the Spirit of God, it seemed to me, 
as it touched the hearts and conscience of men ; I 
have seen them in the face of the call of the Spirit 

37 



434 Sermons and Sayings. 

and the influence of grace reject and reject and 
reject the call, until I could almost hear the rust- 
ling wings of the divine Spirit as it carried away 
the blessed influence of God to come back no more 
forever. O, what a fearful sin it is to drive out of 
your heart the influence of God. 

You may trifle with the preacher and laugh at 
the Church, but, O, brother, I warn you not to trifle 
with the Spirit of God. 

" There is a time, we know not when, 
A point, we know not where, 
That marks tiie destiny of men, 
For glory or despair." 

God forbid that any man in this service to-night 
should cross the line from beyond which no man 
ever came back. O, sir, while the good Spirit 
touches your heart, yield, yield, yield instantly, and 
yield forever! If God had given his Son to die 
for us, and w,e had refused to look at the scene, 
then we would have died without excuse; but when 
God not only gives a sacrifice, and points you to 
the sacrifice by the divine Spirit, we are still more 
without excuse; he comes closer to us, and calls 
by his Word, by his blessed Book. On every 
page of this Book there is a divine call. O, sir, if 
I begin with Genesis and end with Revelation, I yet 
have to acknowledge the truth. I have received 
ten thousand calls from a life of sin to a life of 
holiness in the sight of God. This Book is full of 
calls, and every call is plain and easy of under- 
standing. This Book lies on the table in your 
home, this neglected Book, and you throw it aside 



The Calls of God. 435 

as a thing of no moment. If this little bundle of 
paper I hold in my hand is true, it outweighs all 
this world; if this Book is true, it outweighs the 
stars ; if this Book is true, then let us read it, and 
heed its calls, and be guided by its divinely given 
precepts. O, sir, this Book is yours. God sent it 
to your home. May be it was a present under God 
from a good mother to you; may be a precious 
Christian wife gave this Book to you the day of 
your marriage; may be some good man dropped 
this Book in your hands and said: "There is a 
Holy Bible, Book divine V' Clasp it to your heart 
and say, " Precious treasure, thou art mine." Take 
this Book, brother, be guided by it. 

Not only does God call us by his Spirit and 
by his Word, but he calls us also by his ministry. 
O, how many consecrated preachers there are in 
the world to-day. Look at this city. It has a 
thousand pulpits calling men to a better life. O, 
sir, while you hear me now, I look you in the face 
and say your criticisms of a preacher, your criti- 
cisms upon the pulpit do not lessen your responsi- 
bility to God. I do n't care who may be your 
preacher ; I care not whether he is educated or un- 
educated. This much I can say and tell the truth — 
I never heard an old African preach or an Ameri- 
can preach anywhere that there was not truth 
enough in his sermon to save a thousand souls like 
mine. I know that, and whatever you may say 
about your preacher, you can not say that in any 
single sermon you have ever listened to there was 
not truth enough in it to make you a good man, and 



436 Sermons and Sayings. 

carry you home to God. They are doing their duty 
the best they can, and I say to you to-night, there are 
preachers within hearing of my voice that have spent 
restless nights on their knees praying for your hus- 
band or your son, when you are sleeping, as if there 
were nothing for you to be interested in. No one 
who has not filled the relations of pastor to a people 
can tell the hours of agony we spend before God in 
wrestling at the throne, that God may revive his 
work and save the husbands of our good women, 
and save the children of our precious mothers, and 
bring the world to Christ. 

Thank God for the preachers. They have been 
worth all the world to me. And I tell you, brother, 
as long as sin is in the world, may God let the 
preachers stay in the world. There is not a preacher 
in any pulpit in this town that is not worth more 
to your city than any ten policemen in your city, 
when it comes to good order, morals, and civiliza- 
tion ; and if you will multiply your churches, you 
can minify your police force. If you will make 
churches thicker, the bar-rooms will give way before 
them, and may God grant to the preachers of this 
city power with their congregations and power with 
sinners such as they have never had before. Thank 
God for the faithful ministry, doing it's best toward 
bringing the world to God. Thank God for the 
preachers that have not only preached to us, but 
have met us on the sidewalk and taken our hands 
and said, " I am interested for you ; I am praying 
for you.'' They have not only done that; they 
have come under our roof and prayed with our 



The Calls of God. 437 

loved ones, when we were away, and careless and 
thoughtless, and not only that, but they have fallen 
down on their knees in their studies, and called 
upon God to bless them. And I venture the asser- 
tion, there is not a person in this house to-night 
whose name has not been registered at the mercy 
seat, and put there by the prayers of a faithful 
preacher, and God helps to show that others are in- 
terested, and may it interest us now and forever. 

God calls men by his ministry. Now we are 
not perfect; I know we are not perfect, and we 
have been troubled about that. There is not a 
preacher in this city who does not, in his heart, 
wish that he were a better preacher and a more 
efficient preacher. Brethren, if you want to set 
your preachers on fire, baptize their efforts with 
tears and prayers, and God will give force to 
his Word. 

God calls you likewise by his providences. 
And how closely those providences come to us. 
How sad they make our hearts, and how they show 
the hollowness of time or sense. What man or 
woman is there here to-night who never made a 
pilgrimage to a grave? Who has not gone and laid 
away some loved one ? Which man here has never, 
never, had his home circle touched by the hand of 
death ? Where is my father? Where is my mother ? 
Where is my wife? Where are ray children? O! 
these questions bring tears of sadness to many eyes. 
And I want to tell you men, your precious mothers 
will not stay much longer. Many have already gone. 
I was sitting in a train some weeks ago with a 



438 Sermons and Sayings. 

commercial traveler. He introduced himself and 
commenced talking to me. He said : " Mr. Jones, 
I have been reading your sermons, and I was very- 
much affected. But/' said he, ^^I will tell you 
something that affected me a great deal more than 
that." I said, "What, sir ?" He pulled out a let- 
ter, and he says, " You see this ? It is from my 
precious, good old mother, now seventy years old. 
Read those sentiments.^' And they were like the 
sentiments of an angel of God. Said he : " Mr. 
Jones, mother has been writing that way to me all 
my life since I have been away from home, and it 
is not what mother said that touches the heart, but 
it is that nervous hand she holds that pen with. 
She is not going to write to me much longer.'' 
And he said : " When I answered the letter I said, 
' Precious mother, your boy surrenders to God, and 
he will never give you any more trouble.' " 

Providence touches us on all sides. When I 
was preaching at Nashville I got on the train Fri- 
day evening and started home, and I sat on the 
engine with the engineer. He said to me, " Mr. 
Jones, you touched me and got very close to me 
last night at meeting." Said I, "How is that?" 
He said, " When you told about your old school- 
mate, Virginia." The incident which I related was 
this: One morning I walked down to an old 
schoolmate's home, and when I walked in there was 
the wife and mother, an old schoolmate of mine. I 
talked to her kindly and took my seat by the side 
of her child, which was sick. There was a little 
two-year-old fellow on his mother's lap, looking 



The Calls of God. 439 

like a little angel chiseled out of marble. When I 
walked in I spoke to her and sat there a moment. 
Said I : " Virginia, I believe God is going to take 
this sweet child too.^' " Yes, yes,'^ she said, " and 
this will be the fifth precious one God has taken." 
" Well," said I, "Virginia, did it ever occur to you 
that God was doing his best to save your poor 
husband ?" " O," she said, " do you recognize what 
it means?" Said I, " I believe it so." " O, well," 
she said, " if God can save my husband by taking 
these precious children I will give all my children 
up to God without a murmur." And she sat there, 
and the tears just rained out of her eyes on the face 
of the little sick child. I got up and walked down 
town', and I found her husband, a kind-hearted, 
good fellow, that had drunk himself to the verge 
of perdition. I stopped him on the walk and laid 
my hand on his shoulder, and I said, " John, I am 
just from your house, old fellow. God is going to 
take that other sweet child. Now, John, your wife 
is bathing that child this moment in her tears. You 
have got as good a wife as a man ever had. Did 
it ever occur to you that God is doing his best to 
save you from a drunkard's grave ?" I saw the 
tears start in his eyes ; and I want to tell you to-day 
that that man is one of the best men in our city, 
and an official member of the Church that my wife 
belongs to. Thank God, thank God for the means 
by which he reaches the children of men and leads 
them to a better life. 

God came to our home thirteen years ago. And 
if you had asked me : " What is the worst thing that 



440 Sermo^^s and Sayings. 

can happen to you?'^ I would have thought in my 
heart, " The loss of my father.'^ And I have 
scarcely seen a day since my father died — he is not • 
dead ; he is not dead ; I never think of him as 
being dead; I just think of him. as a father in 
heaven — I have not seen a day since he told me 
good-bye that I would not have given any thing 
in the world if I could just have my father back 
one hour, and just lean my head on his bosom, and 
have him talk to me like he once did. But he is 
gone. O, when my Father in heaven took my 
earthly father, then it was that I realized that he 
would be a father to me, and bless me beyond all 
that, that my earthly father could have done. When 
God came to my home and took our little nineteen- 
months-old Beulah to that bright world up yonder, 
I was a poor, cheerless, miserable sinner. I looked 
in the face of that sweet child, and I am a great 
deal better father to my other children than I ever 
would have been if I did not have one in heaven. 
Gone! and O, how dark and cheerless was my 
home ! I could not pray; I could not look to God. 
I looked down into the grave, and it was dark, so 
dark ! She is gone ! That is the only one of my 
children that ever saw her father when he was 
not a Christian. That is the only one that ever 
saw her father when he was dissipated ! She is in 
heaven. Thank God I have not a living child that 
ever looked in my face when I v/as not a Christian 
trying to set a good example, and trying to lead 
my children to a better world. 

Fathers, you owe your children a debt. God has 



Tpie Calls of God. 441 

come very close to you. If taking your property 
away from you will save you, God will do that. If 
taking your wife, and nothing else but taking your 
wife from you will save you, God will take your 
wife. If taking your children, and nothing but 
that will save you, God will take your children. 
The engineer, sitting on that engine, said : " Mr. 
Jones, last night, when you told about "Virginia, 
you got mighty close to me f^ and the tears started 
down his cheeks. Said he : " This last year God 
came to my home and took the sweetest child I 
had.^^ Then he said : " Mr. Jones, since that I 
have not cursed an oath and I have not taken a 
drink. I want you to pray for me. I have got a 
good wife ; I have happy children. Pray for me. 
I want to be a good man." 0, brethren, God gets 
very close to us when he comes to our homes, and 
touches our hearts and makes us wish for a better 
life. O, will you hear? 

He calls us by his providences to-night, and by 
those precious promises he gives us in his book. 
But God does not stop there. He calls me in every 
way. I believe it was Mr. Spurgeon who said that, 
if we but had ears to hear, we should know that 
God calls us in ten thousand ways. Brother, when 
you walk out in the morning you see the sun climb- 
ing the slippery steeps of the eastern horizon, and 
God speaks through the sun, and the sun looks 
down and smiles upon you and says: ^^O, man, I 
am climbing up higher, and my pathway grows 
brighter. Is your pathway upward and brighter, 
like mine?" AVhen the sun reaches the meridian 



442 Seemons and Sayings. 

and looks down again it says : ^^ O, man, I have 
reached the meridian height ! Have you reached 
the meridian of your life ? Will you soon begin to 
decline as I now do?''^ And when he sinks behind 
the western horizon and paints a scene of beauty 
across it, he whispers back and says: "O, man, 
suns have their setting. Suns will set, and we shall 
die. Will you paint the beauties of a happy, well- 
spent life upon the faces and lives of those around 
you? or will you die like the sun, going down in 
gloom and darkness?" O, sir, when 1 enter my 
home at night, then God speaks to me. The supper 
bell rings, and I call my children around the table. 
They gather, and I help their plates. God looks at 
the picture and says : ^^My child, I will feed you on 
heaven's bread and angePs food if you come to me. 
You are the father, and these are children. I am a 
Father; be thou my child and come to me, and I 
will clothe you and feed you with the bread and 
raiment of heaven. '^ And then, when I sit down 
at my gas-jet and begin to read, the little candle 
fly flits around the light, and I dash it away. " Out, 
poor, foolish thing; don't burn yourself to death.'' 
It flits around and into the light, and burns itself 
to death. And God says : " Poor man, you are 
doing the very same thing yourself. You are daz- 
zled by the pleasures of life, and flitting around 
them, and you will drop into the heat of despair and 
be burned up forever.'^ Then, when I retire at 
night and close my door, God says : " Man, some 
day heaven's door will be closed. Will you be with 
the damned, cast out, or will you be shut in forever 



The Calls of God. 443 

with God/' When some sudden noise wakes you 
at night, God says : " Ye know not the day nor 
the hour when the Son of Man cometh. Be ye also 
ready/' When you walk down town to business, 
God says to you as you measure off your yard of 
cloth, "Man, I will measure off your days to you/' 
And when you take the scissors and clip the cloth, 
God says ; " When I measure off your days the scis- 
sors of death shall clip you from time and pass you 
into eternity." And when you take the sugar or 
coffee and throw it into the scales and weigh it, God 
says : " O, man, mene, mene, tekel : thy days are 
numbered; thou art weighed in the balance and 
found wanting." There you are, a blacksmith, and 
as you pound the iron God says : " O, man, I have 
pounded upon your heart with the hammer of 
truth; yet I have never shaped you unto God." 
Here is a school-teacher. Christ comes to you and 
says: "Learn of me ; I will teach you things that 
no other teacher ever knew." Are you a lawyer? 
God says to you : "As you represent your clients 
there, let my Son be your advocate, for you shall be 
tried up yonder by and by." Are you a farmer? 
With every seed you drop from your hand God 
says : " Man, I have been sowing the seed of God in 
your heart. Have they come up ?" And, when you 
take the sickle in to reap the harvest, God says : 
" Man, some of these days the sickle of death will 
cut you down, and the wheat shall be separated 
from the chaff." As you see that river flowing 
through your city, God tells you : " O, man, as you 
look upon its waters, will you ever stand redeemed 



444 Seemons and Sayings. 

on the banks of the river of life, and be with God 
forever?'^ These beautiful shade trees that mark 
your streets, God says, as you pass each one : " O, 
man, will you ever eat of the fruit of the tree of 
life that grows in the city of God?^' Every crack- 
ing, burning fire that meets your gaze God says : 
" Will you be cast out where the worm never dies 
and the fire shall never be quenched ?'' And here, 
as we ride up and down the streets, each house tells 
me : " There is a house not made with hands eter- 
nal in the heavens. Will you live and abide there 
with God forever, or will you be houseless and 
homeless in eternity ?'' Wherever I turn, w^herever 
I go, God is calling me to a better life. 

Now, brother, God is not only calling us in a 
thousand ways, but there is another fact : W^e have 
heard those calls, every one of them ; those calls 
have been so loud that all men have heard them. 
Blessed be God, you have not only heard them with 
your ears, but they have rung down through the 
chambers of your souls; and not only have you 
heard these calls, and heard them a thousand times, 
but you have understood every one of them. You 
knew what they meant; you knew their purpose; 
you knew the desire of God in making those calls. 
Now, because I have been called in ten thousand 
ways, and God has made me hear those calls, and 
God has made me understand those calls, and I 
have refused them all, God says himself: " I, also, 
will laugh at your calamities. I will mock when 
your fear cometh.'' I do n^t know what that m.eans. 
I read in that Book : " What measure ye mete shall 



The Calls of God. 445 

be measured to you again. '^ Hear me, brother; 
listen : O, men, to-night you scoff and laugh at 
God. Now, "as God pleads with you, you laugh 
and scoff at him, and so, by and by, when you plead 
and beg, God will laugh and scoff at you. As you 
treat God to-night he will treat you by and by. 
You say, '' O, that is so unreasonable. It is so 
wicked to talk that way." It is God's own utter- 
ance. Hear it, brother. You laugh and scoff now, 
and God says, when you plead by and by, as I 
plead to-night : '^ I will laugh at your calamities. I 
will mock when your fear cometh." 

O, what a thought ! I do n't understand it, I 
say. I can 't understand it. One minute : I will 
illustrate, and then leave this awful question with 
you. One of our old preachers told me the only 
incident I have ever heard in all my experience 
that can at all illustrate what this thought is or 
what it can mean. He said in the village where he 
then lived, out in the country about two miles, 
there lived a gentleman of culture and refinement — 
a Christian gentleman. The man was wealthy, and 
he had only one child, a boy. Upon this boy he 
lavished all the love of his heart ; he gave him 
every thing that love could suggest and money 
could buy. This boy went off to college, and came 
back home dissipated, and the father exhausted all 
the infinite sympathy and love of his heart upon 
him. Yet the boy went from bad to worse. It 
was the comment of the community that such a 
father could love, that such a father could bestow 
such kindness upon such a degraded boy. The 



446 Sermoxs and Sayings. 

father loved him on, and clung to him through it all ; 
but the boy got deeper in his guilt. The father, 
said the preacher, drove into town one day, and 
hitched his horse on the square, and started down 
to a store to procure some things. He met this 
drunken boy of his staggering along the street. 
The boy met him, and took his father by the collar 
and shook him rudely, and cursed him to his face. 
The father pulled loose from the boy, and with a 
countenance that meant more than a biography, 
stepped into his buggy and drove off home. The 
servant took his horse, and he was seen to walk 
away to a beautiful grove of a hundred acres in 
front of the house, and walked down to the furthest 
corner. Some of them watched him. When he 
reached the further corner he put his hands to his 
head, gave the most unearthly shriek that human 
lips ever gave utterance to, and then took down his 
hands a moment; then threw up his hands again 
with a scream that startled all who have heard it, 
and then walked deliberately back to his house. 
Just as he reached the porch this boy came walking 
up behind him on the porch. His father turned 
around; the boy staggered in. The father caught 
him and straightened him up in his presence, turned 
his face toward the road, and said: "Off of these 
premises forever. You are no longer my son or kin 
of mine. You vagabond, leave forever.*^ And ten 
days later that boy died in the gutter in that town, 
and his father never saw his corpse or attended his 
funeral. "Mercy knows the appointed bounds and 
terms of vengeance there.'* 



The Calls of God. 447 

O, sir, this alone can [illustrate the feelings of 
the Son of God when he walked upon the hill, near 
the city of Jerusalem, and looked down upon it in 
its guilt and said: " O, Jerusalem." It was the 
wail of a God. ^^ O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how 
often would I have gathered thy children together, 
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her 
wings, but ye would not. Behold, your house is 
left unto you desolate." Off of my heart forever. 
Off of my heart forever. God pity the man that 
pushes divine love to extremities like that. 

'^ I have called and ye have refused." God help 
us to-night, if we have never done so before, to 
yield our hearts to God, and be religious from this 
blessed hour out. Won^t you, friends ? Won't 
you? But, thank God, in conclusion, just one 
sentence : 

" But they who turn to God shall live, 
Through his abounding grace ; 
His mercy will the guilt forgive 
Of those who seek his face." 

God is not implacable towards you. He loves 
you. He calls you. He seeks you. Come to God 
and live to-night. Won't you, friend ? I beg you 
come. We are going to invite into the inquiry 
room every man that does not want to slight an- 
other offer of grace and scoff at the Bible, and 
means to yield to God. We beg you come now. 
Let us settle the question to-night. It has been the 
dilly-dally of the past that has been the curse of 
those here. Now, men of sense and men of souls, 
hear me to-night. Let us make an eternal decision 



448 Seemons and Sayings. 

before we leave this house. If it is right to serve 
God and live right, let us decide it to-night, and 
act upon that decision. If it is not right, let us 
decide, " I won't yield to God," and let that de- 
cision be final and eternal. As for one, I utter it 
from the depths of my heart, if I never surrendered 
fully to God until now, by the grace of God I 
make the unconditional eternal surrender to-night. 
God shall be my portion for ever. 

Will you decide that way ? If you do n't, then 
decide the other way, and walk out of this house 
with destiny fixed and doom settled for all worlds. 
God help you to say, " This night I surrender to 
God and make my peace with him through Jesus 
Christ." 



SAYINOS. 

I NEVER did believe in this way of sticking a 
religious hymn into a fellow and calling him con- 
verted. But if you get a sensible man and have 
him see that is the way to Christ, and get him on 
that way, that is the way to grace. 

Some fellow is fool enough to say he does n't 
believe in any thing he never saw. Well, then, 
he does n't believe he has a backbone. Another 
says he does n't believe any thing he can 't under- 
stand. Well, do you believe that some cows have 
horns and others are muley-headed ? 

O ! FOR pure society, and pure homes, and pure 
Churches where all things are pure, and then it 



The Calls of God. 449 

would never be necessary for such things to be dis- 
cussed. The religion that comes from above is, 
first, pure, for you get that sort in the pure, unde- 
filed religion of the Bible. Have you, brethren, 
got the religion that makes you pure in your heart, 
and pure in your life, and pure in all manner of 
conversation? Have you got that? That is the 
first thing to see to, and that is the grandest thing 
of all — a pure heart, and that heart the sovereign 
of all your life and actions. Have that, and it in- 
deed shall make your life pure. 

WoKKS AND Faith. — The good Book says that 
faith without works is dead; but it does not say 
that works without faith are dead. Did you ever 
think of that? Whenever you see a fellow plow- 
ing in some field you will find that the best reason 
he has for plowing is that he believes that he is 
going to make grain out of it. Do n't you see ? 
He would not plow a lick if he did not think that 
he was going to make something out of it. So, 
whenever you see a man going around and doing 
and acting like God tells him to do and act, he is 
giving the best test that he has belief in what God 
says. And, after all, I do n't judge a man by his 
faith, but by his works ; and if you do that you will 

hit a man every time. 

38 



SBRMON XXII. 

ATVHOSOKVKR WILL. 

" And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come ; and let him 
that heareth say, Come ; and let him that is athirst come ; 
and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." — 
Eev. XXII, 17. 

YOU see I get this text from the last page of 
this blessed Book. This is God's last message 
to man. And for fear that something might be 
added to, or that something might be taken from, 
the Scripture, God puts this fearful admonition : 
*Tor I testify unto every man that heareth the 
words of the prophecy of this Book : If any man 
shall add unto these things God shall add unto him 
the plagues that are written in this Book. And 
if any man shall take away from the words of the 
Book of this prophecy, God shall take away his 
part out of the Book of Life, and from the things 
that are written in this Book.'' 

If I have been corresponding with a friend on 
any given subject, and he has written me a dozen 
or a hundred letters upon that subject — if I want 
to find his mind now concerning that, I will turn 
to the last letter received from him, the one bear- 
ing the most recent date. And now, if I want to 
know God's will concerning the race of man, I 
don't run back over Genesis, or Deuteronomy, or 
the prophecies of Isaiah, or the Epistle to the 
Eomans by St. Paul — I run through the Book, 
and I turn to God's last words to man, and I see 
450 



"Whosoever Will. 451 

the fearfnl warning added : " Do n't any man take 
away these words. If he does, I will take away 
his part out of the Book of Life. And if any 
man shall add any thing to this Book, then I will 
add unto him the plagues that are written in the 
Book.'' And after all the fearful warnings, and 
judgments, and denunciations of the Scripture, 
thanks be to God, this is his last message : " And 
the Spirit and the Bride say. Come; and let him 
that heareth say. Come; and whosoever will, let 
him take of the water of life freely." 

It was a grand day in the world's history when 
the evening and the morning were the seventh 
day, and the sons of God and angels shouted over 
a finished world. It was a grand day in the world's 
history when Adam and Eve, the first pair, stood 
before God, with their reason clear and perfect, 
unruffled by passion, unclouded by prejudice, and 
unimpaired by disease. It was a grand conception 
to them as they looked out over a finished world, 
and said that the flowers were God's thought in 
bloom ; that the rivers were God's thought im- 
bedded ; that the mountains were God's thought 
piled up, and that the dewdrops were his thoughts 
in pearl as they mingle in loving tenderness and 
join together on the leaf of the rose. And wher- 
ever man looked about him, all nature, in its 
beauty and freshness, whispered back : " The hand 
that made me is divine." It was a grand, though 
sad, day in the world's history when it was an- 
nounced through the moral universe of God that 
man had violated the law of God, and had brought 



452 Sermons and Sayings. 

misery and woe upon himself and upon his progeny- 
forever. It was a grand day in the world's history 
when God met the fallen and degenerate pair, and 
said to Eve : ^' The seed of the woman shall bruise 
the serpent's head.'' It was a grand day in the 
world's history when the last strong swimmer sank 
beneath the flood, and left Noah in his ark with his 
three sons and their wives, and two of every beast 
and bird to perpetuate the race upon the face 
of the earth. It was a grand day in this world's 
history when Pharoah and his hosts, and all of his 
chariots and men, were swallowed up and engulfed 
in the Red Sea. It was a grand day in this 
world's history when a burning hail fell on Sodom 
and Gomorrah and all the plains thereof and de- 
stroyed the cities of the plain. It was a grand day 
in this world's history when 185,000 soldiers under 
the blast of an angel's wing were wrapt iu their 
winding sheets. It was a grand day in this world's 
history when Korah, and Dathan, and Abiram, and 
their wicked company were swallowed up out of 
the sight of men. 

It was a grander day in the world's history 
when the old prophet of God stood on the hills of 
Judea with his spark in hand and let its beneficent rays 
shine down through seven centuries, and his voice was 
heard through the seven centuries, saying, " Simeon 
and Anna, prepare the cradle to rock the babe of 
Bethlehem." It was a grand day in this world's 
history when the star poised itself over the manger, 
and the wise men gathered about the babe of Beth- 
lehem. There they looked upon an everlasting God 



Whosoever Will. 453 

lying asleep in Mary's arms, and the King of angels 
and God over all blessed for evermore as he was 
carried about in a virgin's arms, as they looked upon 
the King of angels as the carpenter's despised boy. 
It was a grand day in this world's history when, at 
twelve years of age, this God-man surprised all the 
wisdom of Jerusalem by his forethought and his 
intelligence. It was a grand day in this world's 
history when the Son of God notified his disciples, 
to whom he had been sent from the Father, that he 
must be crucified and buried, and that he would arise 
on the third day from the dead. It was a grand day 
in the world's history when he hung on a cross 
suspended between two thieves and cried out with 
a loud voice, " My God ! My God ! Why hast thou 
forsaken me ?" It was a grand day in the world's 
history when they buried this sacrifice in the grave 
of Joseph, and put the seal of the Roman govern- 
ment upon it, and put sturdy Roman soldiers around 
it to guard it. 

It was a grand day in the world's history when 
on the morning of the third day God summoned 
an angel to his side, because Christ himself had an- 
nounced the fact, " I am the sacrifice. I go to die 
for the world." And now the only question with 
his disciples and with all humanity is, " Will God 
accept the sacrifice?" He has suffered and died. 
He is buried. Will he ever rise again ? Will God 
accept the sacrifice ? God told the angel to go to 
earth as swift as morning light and roll away the 
stone from the grave, and when he made his ap- 
pearance at the grave and rolled away the stone, 



454 Seemons Axr> Sayings. 

the Son of God stood up in the sepiilcher and took 
the napkins from his face and the grave clothes 
from his body, and folded them up and laid them 
to one side, and walked forth from the tomb, 
the first fruits of the resurrection. Then God ac- 
cepted the sacrifice, and grasped the stylus in his 
own hand and signed the magna charta of man's 
salvation. And ever since that God-blessed moment 
it has been written : " Whosoever liveth and believeth 
in me, shall never die.'' 

It was a grand day in the world's history when the 
Savior of men stood yonder, surrounded by a com- 
pany of five hundred, and a chariot descended from 
the skies, and he stepped into the chariot, and above 
moon and star he disappeared, until it overvaulted 
the very throne of God itself And as they stood 
gazing up into heaven, an angel flew back to earth 
and shouted aloud to them, "Why stand ye here 
gazing up into heaven ? As ye have seen the Son of 
IMan ascending, so he shall descend at the last day 
to judge the world in righteousness." 

That was a grand day in this world's history when 
the one hundred and twenty gathered in an upper 
room in Jerusalem, and they had prayed the first day 
and the second day and the third day, and until the 
tenth day. They were praying for the enduement of 
power from on high. Christ had told them : " Tarry 
ye here at Jerusalem until ye be endued with power 
from on high. It is expedient for you that I go away." 

I have often thought of that expression which 
Jesus used, " It is expedient. The best thing I can 
do for you is to leave the world and go home to 



Whosoever Will. 455 

the Father, and then the Spirit will come/' Master, 
can there be any thing better than thy presence ? Thou 
art the bread of life to us. Thou art the water of 
life to us. Thou art the door by which, if any 
man enter, he shall go in and out and find pasture. 
Thou art the truth and the way and the life. 
Master, is it expedient, is it best that thou go 
away ? He said ; '^ It is expedient that I go to the 
Father.'^ And on the morning of the tenth day, 
when that company gathered and prayed in that 
upper chamber, the Holy Spirit, the third person 
of the adorable trinity, flew down to earth, and 
rushed in upon that company like a rushing 
mighty, wind ; and Peter opened the door, and the 
company followed him down upon the streets of 
Jerusalem, and there, on the morning of the tenth 
day, he preached that memorable sermon in Jerusa- 
lem that won three thousand souls to Christ — more 
conversions through Peter in that one sermon than 
Christ had in all his ministry. And Christ knew 
what he was talking about when he said : " It is 
expedient for you that I should go away." 

God gave the Son, and the Son came to suffer, 
die, and to arise again. And now the Spirit comes 
to woo and beseech and implore and enlighten and 
convict and convert the world to God. It seems 
as if, after God had loved the race and called them 
to him and they had wandered off, that they would 
have died without remedy, but God sent his Son to 
live among us and to die for us and to preach to us 
and to instruct us, and if he had stopped at that 
man would have died without the benefit of his 



456 Sermons and Sayings. 

Savior's death. But he didn't stop there. And 
now the Holy Ghost comes into the world — the 
third person of the adorable Trinity, and every 
good resolution we ever have, and every good that 
ever inspired us, and every good deed ever done, 
we owe to the inspiration and influence of the 
Holy Spirit of God. 

Thank God! we have an ever present, om- 
niscient, omnipresent God with us to-night. When 
I bid wife and children ^^ good-bye" at home, God 
boards the train with me, and he is with me all the 
weary miles of my road from home. And then I 
am conscious God is at home with my family, and 
when I come into the Christian homes of this city 
there I find God present, and God is with the 
missionary in China, and God is with thousands and 
millions of pulpits on earth. No wonder the blessed 
Christ said: "It is expedient for you that I go 
away. I will send the Comforter." 

O, brother, sister, hear me to-night. Is there in 
your soul the desire to be good ? Is there a purpose 
to be good ? Is there a resolution to be good ? It 
was born under the touch of the divine Spirit upon 
these cold, dead hearts of ours. And the Spirit 
comes to woo. He comes to teach. He comes to 
implore. For when he shall come he will re- 
prove the world of sin and of righteousness and 
of judgment to come. 

" Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove, 
With all thy quickening powers, 
Kindle a flame of sacred love 
In these cold hearts of ours." 



Whosoever Will. 457 

Help us to walk close with God ! Help us, 
divine Spirit, ever to be tender and impressible ! 
Help us ever to hear and heed the Gospel of the 
Son of God ! The divine Spirit broods over the 
congregation to-night. He touched your heart to- 
day. He touched your heart last night and day 
before yesterday. He has touched a thousand 
hearts or more, and called them to a better life in 
the last few days in this city. And the most fear- 
ful sin that you may commit is to wound the Spirit 
of God, to drive him out of your heart and drive 
him away from your presence. The book says : 
"Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye 
are sealed unto the day of redemption." 

You may laugh at me. You may deride me. 

You may scoff at the Church. You may defy God 

and you may crucify my Savior afresh and put him 

to open shame, but I warn you to-night: take 

heed how you trifle with the Spirit of all grace ! I 

have seen men reject and insult the divine Spirit, 

until I could almost hear the Spirit of God as he 

closed the gates of heaven forever in an immortal 

spirit's face. My friend, to-night, if there is in 

your soul the desire to be a Christian, nurse it, 

foster it, shield it. Keep it there and pray God to 

fan the spark into a living flame, that shall burn 

on and on when the stars have gone and when the 

moon shall turn to blood. Let you and I pray 

for this, and whatever others may do, God help us 

to be impressible and movable under the divine 

Spirit of grace. 

" The Spirit says, Come." The third person of 
39 



458 Sermons and Sayings. 

the ever adorable Trinity is the active agency in 
the world to-day to teach men, to move men, to 
stir men and use men, and but for his divine 
presence with me as I preach the Gospel, I declare 
to you the fact, that I would never have the heart to 
take another text in this world. O, how many 
struggles the earnest preacher may have in the 
world ! God only knows the burdens that I have 
carried on my own poor head since I landed in your 
city. God only knows the wakeful hours, the tears 
and the prayers that have gone up from my poor 
heart, and I say : " God save the city ! God arouse 
the city! God save our young men! God save 
our young women! God save the fathers and 
mothers in this city V^ And I can almost hear God 
as he whispers back : " I ^11 be with you, I '11 stand 
by you.'' God arouse you! And God help his 
Church to heed the wooing of the Spirit and come 
to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord 
against the mighty. 

"The Spirit says, Come." Well, if God had 
stopped at the point — given his Son and sent his Spirit 
to woo men — we would have died without excuse. 
But God pushes his work on and on and on, until 
he shall say to a guilty world : " What more could 
I have done to my vineyard that I have not already 
done?" God will never leave a stone unturned, 
God will never leave an effort unput-forth as long 
as a man is out of hell and out of the grave. And 
I tell you, my congregation, to-night, I know God 
is in earnest about the salvation of man, and I have 
felt thousands of times that the worst of sinners 



Whosoevek Will. 459 

would rejoice if they were to see his face. God 
help men to look up to-night and see their Father's 
face with all the love of his heart as it beams forth, 
and hear his voice as he calls them to the better 
life. God loves you, and he has given you every 
manifestation of his love. He tells you in his 
blessed Book: "When my father and my mother 
forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.'' 

I have seen a mother as she followed a wayward 
boy on, and on, and on, to the very brink of hell, 
and when the son made his final leap from his 
mother's arms, she took his poor body and buried 
it, and would go to his grave and water it with her 
tears day after day. O, how that mother's heart 
clung to that wayward boy ! I have seen the wife 
when every friend in the world had forsaken her 
husband, and all mankind scoffed him away from 
their presence — when he would come home drunken 
and debauched and ruined, his precious wife would 
meet him at the front gate and help him up the 
steps, and help him into the room and carry him 
to the bed and pull off his muddy shoes and bathe 
his fevered face, and imprint the kiss of love and 
fidelity upon his dissipated cheek. O, why did wife 
do that? Why does mother do that? It is just a 
little of the nature of God poured into that moth- 
er's heart and that wife's heart that makes her love 
and cling to that son and to that husband as 
she does. 

The sweetest thought in God's Word to me is 
the place where we are taught the motherhood of 
God. God is not only my father, but God is my 



460 Seemons and Sayings. 

mother, too, in all his loving kindnesses and tender 
mercies to us. O, my Father ! my Father ! with 
the rod of correction, and with the stern words of 
advice, I look to thee in admiration and love; and 
O, God, my precious mother, I run to thy arms! 
Thou art my mother, I love thee with all my heart. 

" And the Spirit says, Come." But God did not 
stop with that. "The Spirit and the bride say. 
Come." The Church of God is the bride of the 
lamb. I wish we were wrapped in white waiting 
for the Bridegroom. O, how I wish we had always 
lived, and always been faithful to our Bridegroom ! 
He said, " I go to prepare a place for you." You 
see that young man yonder. He has plighted his 
vows to a young lady, and he bids her good-bye for 
a short time — "I am going West to prepare our 
fortune and build our house and have every thing 
ready." Brethren, that young lady instead of be- 
ing faithful to that earnest, laborious young man 
preparing good things for her, is flirting with her 
betrothed husband^s enemies, and associating with 
those that despise her husband. God forgive the 
unfaithful girl. And while Christ is by his divine 
power and infinite wisdom exhausting all the riches 
and glories of heaven preparing for us, his bride, 
here we are consorting with his enemies and flirting 
with the gay and giddy godless ones of the world. 
Precious Savior! forgive us, forgive us! We will 
not associate with the godless any longer. 

" The bride says. Come !" I wish we lived bet- 
ter. But there is one thing I have found out. — we 
know we have been unfaithful ; we know we have 



Whosoever Will. 461 

not been what we ought to have been. But one 
thing I can say and tell the truth — the Church of 
God Almighty has not lost her interest in sinners 
and in the world. For over one thousand years 
the Church has been on her knees and praying for 
sinners, and the message of the Church of God is a 
God-given message. You have cursed the Church 
and abused the Church, and degraded the Church 
and called them hypocrites, but do you want to see 
whether the Church loves you or not? If the worst 
old sinner in this city would come with streaming 
eyes and say to the Church of God, "Men and 
brethren, pray for me; I want to join your com- 
pany and go with you to heaven," I see the 
Church in a minute, as her tears come flowing 
down to the earth and vshe lifts her hand to God, 
and she says, "Blessed be God! Another sinner 
repenting and coming to life." The old Church of 
God does love the world, and she has been praying 
for the world in all its ages; and while we have 
forgotten a thousand things and neglected a thou- 
sand things, thanks be unto God, we have never 
neglected to pray for you, my fellow-citizens. There 
is not a day or a night that in the Church of God 
her best men and women are not on their knees 
praying, " God save the wicked of the city and 
save the fallen of humanity;" and the cry of the 
Church and the song of the Church is, " Rescue the 
perishing and save the fallen." 

Thank God for the old Church. She has been 
worth all the world to me. I know not I should 
have wandered a poor motherless orphan if it 



462 Sermons and Sayings. 

had not been for the Church of Jesus Christ. 
She has been so good to me. She has been a 
mother in the best sense ! I never joined the 
Church because I thought I could help it along, 
but I joined the Church that she might take me, a 
poor babe, in her arms and nurture me, and feed me, 
and take care of me ; and whatever the Church has 
been to others, I can say of God's people to-night, 
they have given me my meat and my drink, and 
they have been friends and brothers to me. 

O, friend, you will never know what you have 
missed by staying out of the pale of the Church 
of God, and I beg you to hear the voice of the 
Church of God as it cries to-night : " Come thou 
and go with us, and we will do thee good." Won't 
you come ? The Church of God, with her Bibles, 
and missionaries, and preachers, and consecrated 
ministry, and good women and men on earth, with 
her Churches and Sabbath-schools, and her prayer- 
meetings and family altars — they all cry aloud and 
say : ^^ Come thou and go with us, and we will do 
thee good.'' 

" The Spirit and the Bride say. Come." It looks 
as if, had God stopped there, we should have died 
without help. It goes further: "And the Spirit 
and the bride say. Come ; and let him that heareth 
say, Come." O, blessed thought ! A man need not 
wait until he comes into the Church before he says 
to those around him : " Come thou and go with 
us. . . . Let him that heareth say. Come." 

We get this figure from the caravan crossing the 
desert. When the water is all given out on the 



Whosoevek Will. 463 

desert, and man and beast are famishing for water, 
then they hold a counsel, and they start one on 
ahead, hurriedly, and in about five minutes they 
start another, just so as to keep him in sound of 
the front one's voice, and in five minutes more 
they start another, and on and on, until they are 
stretched out on the plains for miles, and finally 
the head man finds the oasis, and he halloes back : 
" Water, I have found it V' to the next man, and 
the next man voices it on down the line, and on 
and on until the caravan hears the cry : " We have 
found it ! Water ! Water ! We have found it !" 
And they hear the welcome news, and press on with 
all their might, that they may slake their thirst, 
and preserve their lives. And all the way from 
heaven to earth God has strung out a line, and he 
shouts it from his own lips in heaven, and we catch 
it up and pass it on and on until we shout at the 
very gates of hell : " Come ! Come ! Come ! and 
let him that heareth say. Come !" If you ever heard 
the Gospel, preach it to somebody else, and say : 
" Come on ! Let 's go and live right, and do right, 
and get to heaven." 

" Let him that heareth say, Come !" Let each 
man be a power that will echo the call, and on and 
on down the line. Once one of our little boys ran 
up a stairway calling his little brother, and as he 
said : " Buddie Paul !" something up-stairs echoed 
it back, "Buddie Paul!" He ran down to his 
mother, and said : " Mamma, what is that up-stairs 
that said ' Buddie Paul ' every time I said ^ Buddie 
Paul V " and his mother explained it by telling him 



464 Sekmons and Sayings. 

it was the echo of his voice — the walls of the room 
above echoing his voice back. And brother, when 
God shouts from heaven, let every man be the 
sounding-board that will pass it on and on until this 
whole universe shall hear the glad word : " Let 
whosever heareth say, Come ; and whosoever will, 
let him take the water of life freely.^' 

" Let him that heareth say. Come.'' Why, I have 
often known men to go to work before the word got 
to them. They have gone around among their 
friends, saying ; " Boys, look here. We have not 
done right. Suppose we go to Church, and give our 
hearts to God, and live religious;" and how many 
men have been brought to Christ by men who were 
not religious ? When I was in Jackson, Tennessee, 
I was met by the mayor of the city and other gen- 
tlemen, and they said to me : " We were going to 
your room to see you. We have a friend in this 
town that we want you to talk to. We want him 
to be saved.'' Said I : " Gentlemen, I am glad to 
find you interested ; but, gentlemen, are you Chris- 
tians, members of the Church ?" " No, Mr. Jones, 
we are sorry we are not. We are not Christians, 
but we feel an interest in our friend." " Well," 
said I, " God says that when a kingdom is divided 
against itself it can not stand. And Satan's king- 
dom is divided in this very town. His very ser- 
vants are going to the ministers of God and asking 
them to go and see their friends." When a man is 
interested, and says : " Boys, let 's do better," that 
man is not very far from the kingdom of God. He 
has just put his foot over the line, and all he has 



Whosoever Will. 465 

got to do is to put it down, and one other step, and 
he is in the king(^om of God. 

"Let him that heareth say, Corae.^' There are 
five hundred men and women here to-night that are 
just putting their foot over the dividing line, and all 
you Ve got to do is to put that foot down and 
bring the other foot even with it, and you are in 
the kingdom of God, a saved man — saved forever 
and forever. Will you put your foot down to-night 
and say, " God helping me, I will give myself to 
God ? I won^t stand here any longer." " Let him 
that heareth say, Come.'' 

And then he said, "And let him that is athirst 
come." Whether you have heard any thing or 
not, God bless, you, the call is to you. If there is 
down in your soul a thirst, a hunger for a better 
life, God stands with one hand and touches your 
heart and makes it hunger and thirst, and then he 
stands with the other hand loaded with the bread 
and with the water of life, and he quenches the souPs 
thirst forever. Blessed be God! He stands ready 
to quench thirst and to appease hunger to-night, and 
he is going all over this city with one hand laden 
with the bread of life, and the other with the water 
of life, and the hungriest man will be the first man to 
get it ; and I tell you, hungry man, to-night, when 
God rings the dinner bell of grace, throw down 
your hearts and come in ; dinner is ready to eat ; 
and satisfy your longing needs forever. 

" Let him that is athirst come." If down in 
your soul there is a desire to be a good man, start 
to-night — start to-night. If there is a hungering 



466 Sermons and Sayings. 

for a better life, God says : " Blessed are they that 
hunger and thirst after righteousness/' Then he 
says again : O, how far down the line God brings 
this to us. He brings it right down to where he 
throws heaven and hell at every man's feet, and tells 
him to take his choice. 

Now he says : " Whosoever will, let him take 
of the water of life freely." I like that grand 
" whosoever '' there. I have read a great deal 
about election, but I think I have found out from 
God's Word what you mean by election. The 
" elect " are the " whosoever-wills," and the " non- 
elect" are the " whosoever- won'ts." Now, which side 
will you take — the elect or the whosoever-wills, or 
the non-elect or the whosoever-won'ts ? "Elect," 
whosoever will. Thank God for that grand old word, 
and thank God that as the ages wear away, men see 
God in nature, and see God in all his goodness, and 
see God in his books. Preachers are coming closer 
to that grand old word every day, and I verily be- 
lieve that I shall live to see the day when every 
pulpit in this world will be bottomed on that grand 
old " whosoever will," and there they will stand 
and preach the Gospel of the Son of God. 

This reminds me of the penitent down in Georgia 
at the altar. He was agonizing, praying. The 
preacher went up to him trying to encourage him, 
" Well," he said, " I am not one of the elect. I 
am one of the reprobates ; I feel it all over " — and 
I do n't reckon a poor soul ever did try to seek 
God that the devil didn't slip up with something 
of that sort — "You are one of the reprobates; God 



Whosoever Will. 467 

never died to save you" — and there lie was in 
agony, and the preacher said to him : " Well, my 
brother, listen to me a minute." " Now," said he, 
" if you could see your name, * James B. Green,' 
written upon the Lamb's book this minute, would 
you believe then Christ died for you and you were 
one of the elect?" The poor fellow thought a 
moment and he said, "No, sir. There are other 
people in this world of my name." " Well," said 
the preacher, "if you could see it, ^ James B. 
Green, Scriven County, Ga.,' would you believe it 
was you then ?" " Well," he says, " there may 
have b^en other people of my name in this county 
before I was born. I do n't know." " Well," said 
he, " if you could see it ' James B. Green, Scriven 
County, Ga.,' and the year ' 1867,' would you be- 
lieve it was you ?" " Well," he said, " it may be 
there is somebody in this county now of my name." 
" Well," said he, " if you could see it ' James B. 
Green, of Scriven County, and the Nineteenth Dis- 
trict, and the year '67,' would you believe it was 
you?" "Well," he said, "I could not know defi- 
nitely." " Now," said he, " my friend, God Al- 
mighty saw all that trouble, and he just put it into 
one word, and he said, 'Whosoever will, let him 
take the water of life freely.' And the poor fellow 
jumped up and clapped his hands and said, ' Thank 
God ! I know that means me.' " 

" And whosoever will, let him take the water 
of life freely." Blessed be God ! It is for 
all of us. It is for all of us. " Whosoever 
will." Listen, brother. It isn't "Whosoever 



468 Seemons and Sayings. 

feels; '' it is n't " Whosoever is fit ; " it is n't " Who- 
soever has repented ;/' it is n't " Whosoever has 
got faith ; " it is n't " Whosoever does this or that 
or the other," but it is, ^^ Whosoever will — will — 
will." God throws it all on the will, and I am 
glad he does. I know God traverses my emotional 
nature, and runs through hope and fear and desire 
and anxiety and dread and affection. God runs all 
through my emotional nature and my sensibilities. 
God goes as he pleases through my sensibilities. 
When God reaches intellect, he goes up through 
perception and conception and judgment and mem- 
ory and reason, and all the faculties of the mind. 
God goes through them all, and asks me no questions. 
But when God goes to the door of the human will, 
he stands on tiptoe and knocks and says : " Behold 
I stand at the door and knock, and if any man will 
open unto me I will come in and sup with him and 
he with me." Thank God it is " whosoever will." 
And I like the conclusion : " Let him take the 
water of life freely." Blessed be God, ye thirsty 
men can drink; and there is enough for to-day, 
enough for all of us, enough forever and ever- 
more. Come and drink freely. 

And there is another little word in there I 
like, that little word "let." "Let him take the 
water of life freely." Six thousand years ago God 
said, " Let there be light," and there was light. It 
was a word of command, and God looks out upon a 
famishing race with the water of life in reach, and 
he says, " Let him come ; " and when God says, 
" Let him come," he says, " Go behind him, powers 



Whosoever Will. 469 

and principalities, and clear the way. Let him 
take the water of life freely." God has taken 
down the mountains and filled up the valleys, and 
made you a straight and even and smooth way, so 
that you can drink and live forever, and if you 
perish, you perish because you will not live. God 
never suffered a soul to be captured and carried 
away by the enemy of souls, and will never suffer 
you to die — as long as you look to Christ, or lean 
to Christ, or pray to Christ. God never suffered 
the devil to take possession of an immortal soul and 
drag it down to hell until that soul walked up to the 
feet of the devil and stacked its arms and said, " I 
surrender forever." Then God^s own power and 
arm can never rescue you. God help you to-night 
to say, " God's goodness leadeth me to repentance, 
and I intend to lead a better life." 



SAYINOS. 



The Lost Soul! — Lost! lost! lost! lost! 
Brother, can you meet your dying minutes without 
making your peace with God? If you can, you are 
a braver man than ever I want to be in time or 
eternity. 

When I was pastor, some fellows would growl 
because I did n't go to see them. What do I want 
to go to see you for? The Book tells me to keep 
out of bad company. I suppose if we would visit 
our pastor when we are well and let him visit us 



470 Seemons and Sayings. 

when we are sick, the world would move along 
better. Be to him a helpmate, and not a drawback. 
You ought to cultivate your pastor's acquaintance, 
because it is likely to be broken up some of these 
days. 

What are You Doing! — Whenever a man 
gets up before a community and proclaims his infi- 
delity, then I have just one question to ask another 
party, and one to ask him. I say : " Infidel, what 
are you doing in this world?" And the infidel 
steps up and says : " I 'm fighting Christianity ; 
that's what I'm doing." "Christianity, what are 
you doing ? " And Christianity says : " I am rescu- 
ing the perishing and saving the fallen ; I am build- 
ing almshouses; I am founding Churches; I am 
speaking words of cheer to the race; I am lifting 
up the fallen ; I am blessing the world ; I am sav- 
ing men from hell ; I am saving them in heaven.'^ 
Why, infidel, are you fighting alms-houses, and 
orphans' homes, and Churches, and happy death- 
beds, and pardon, and peace, and heaven ? 0, get 
out of my presence, thou great beast ! Do n't you 
tell me you are fighting such things as that ! You 
ask me : " Mr. Jones, what 's your business in Chi- 
cago?" I answer, It's to throw my arms around 
every poor lost man, and bring him to peace, and 
happiness, and heaven. And now, opposers, what 
is your business? What are you doing? 



Sermon XXIII. 

^HE^ JUDQNIKISIX. 

" What, then, shall I do when God riseth up? And when 
he visiteth what shall I answer him ?" — Job xxxi, 14. 

ALL gospel-taught men believe that there is a 
great day in the future of this world's history 
when God will examine every spiritual fig tree to see 
if there be figs thereon. We all believe that there is 
to be a great day in the future when God will call 
upon every man for usury upon the talent intrusted 
to his care. In other words, we all believe who 
lean upon that Book that *^ God hath appointed a day 
in the which he will judge the world in righteous- 
ness.^' It is spoken of in the Scripture as the day of 
the final restitution of all things. It is spoken of 
as the great day of God's wrath, when the question 
of all shall be : " Who will be able to stand V' Will 
you, will I, be able to stand in that great day? 
To stand then means to stand forever. O, the great 
day of his wrath — the judgment day — the great day 
in the future when God shall summon men and 
angels alike to the great white throne, and when 
every man shall give account of himself unto God ! 
Now, some think that the judgment is past, and 
some think that the judgment is going on now; 
but I believe the Scripture when it says : " God 
hath appointed a day in the which he will judge 
the world in righteousness/' It is spoken of in the 

471 



472 Seemons and Sayings. 

Scripture as a " day." I do n't think we are, by 
any means, to understand that God will judge this 
world in a period of twenty-four hours. This term, 
^May," is used indiscriminately in Scripture. For 
instance, it is written our Savior said: "Abraham 
rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was 
glad." I^ot any particular twenty-four hours of his 
life, but the ,^hole thirty-three years of his exist- 
ence on earth was comprehended in that term, 
" day." Again, our Savior said to the Jews : " O, 
that thou hadst known even in this, thy day, the 
things that belong to thy peace ! " Here he re- 
ferred to no particular twenty-four hours he spent 
in Jerusalem, or upon the bosom of the Lake of 
Gennesaret, or on the hills of Jerusalem ; but the 
whole three years of his ministry was embraced in 
this term, " day." And now " God hath appointed 
a day in the which he will judge the world in 
righteousness." 

And I dare assert this fact : The issues of that 
day are eternal. When once God says : " Depart, 
ye cursed, into everlasting fire ! " there will be no 
after jurisdiction; there will be no revisionary con- 
trol. When God says " Depart," the sentence is 
written, and shall sparkle forever upon the tablets 
of eternity. And the issues being eternal, and there 
being no after jurisdiction or revisionary control, 
no higher court to which we can appeal, we say 
God will not hurry matters on that occasion. God 
will give every soul ample time and opportunity to 
bring out all the " pros " and " cons " on that occa- 
sion. And of this much I rest assured, that up 



The Judgment. 473 

there it will not be as it is in our courts here. We 
grow tired of long trials here ; we grow tired and 
hungry and homesick, but up yonder we will be 
spiritual beings ; we '11 know nothing of hunger or 
weariness, and I believe that an aggregated world 
can stand before God's great white throne a thou- 
sand years and listen to the issues being sifted be- 
tween God and each human soul. God will give 
every man justice, no matter what time may be 
necessary to hear all of his case. God will never 
say to you with final emphasis, "Depart, ye ac- 
cursed," as long as there is hope of your acquittal. 

I may say, again, that I am glad there is such a 
day in the great future, and I am glad there is such 
a day appointed. Without such a day as that there 
would be a great many things in eternity that we 
never could understand. I have fondled the thought 
for thirty years that I would meet my precious 
mother in heaven ; but, if I walked the Elysian 
fields from shore to shore along the banks of the 
river of life, and I could nowhere find my mother, I 
would wander through all eternity, and demand, 
" O, where is my mother, and why is she not here ?'' 
But, with a day like this, when the whole universe 
shall stand before God, and God shall individualize 
my mother, and she shall press her way out of that 
multitude and stand alone before God, and all that 
may be said for and against shall be brought out; 
if, after a fair investigation and just sentence, 
God shall say to my mother : " Depart, ye cursed, 
into everlasting fire ! " then I will understand it. 

This little company gathered here to-night will 
40 



474 Sermons and Sayings. 

be bat a drop in the great ocean that shall be 
gathered before the great white throne; and when 
on a day like that, after all the issues have been 
brought out and all the questions solved and justice 
done and God says to my mother : " Depart, ye ac- 
cursed/' I shall say "Amen," to my mother's dam- 
nation ; I will say : " My mother is condemned, but 
God is just." 

Without such a day as this in the great future 
before us we might meet parties in heaven that 
would astonish us. We have known many a 
knotty, gnarly, hard-to-be-understood Christian in 
this world, and we have thought : " Well, if this 
man gets to heaven we would be surprised," and 
without such a day as that if we should meet such 
a man in heaven we would wonder through all 
eternity, " how could this man have got there ;" 
but with a day like that before us, when God shall 
bring this brother before the great white throne 
and shall strip him of all his idiosyncrasies and 
shall show us all the pure gold of his character, 
and shall say to him : " Come ye blessed," a uni- 
verse will stand around and say "Amen" to this 
brother's commendation. 

There are persons in this world that might fail 
to meet their faithful preacher in heaven. The 
Book says : " Many will say to me in that day : 
Lord, Lord ! have we not prophesied in thy name 
and in thy name cast out devils, and in thy name 
done many wonderful works, and then will I pro- 
fess unto them, I never knew you." And if, after 
roaming through heaven I could never find the 



The Judgment. 475 

faithful preacher that won me to Christ, I should 
wonder, through all eternity, where was the preacher 
that was so earnest and brought me to Christ, and 
I never could understand it without a day like 
this. " But when the whole universe shall appear 
around the great white throne, and God shall in- 
dividualize the preacher, and he shall stand before 
God alone, and God shall strip him of his hypoc- 
risy or his unfaithfulness, and show you what he 
was and say to him : " Depart, ye cursed into ever- 
lasting fire,'' we will all say "Amen" to that 
preacher's condemnation. 

Judgment! Judgment! We will look to the 
final judgment. Well, now, with that day squarely 
before us, let us antedate that day. Let us see 
what it is in all its outlines. Let us imagine this 
world already standing before God just as you are 
standing before me to-night and God shall individ- 
ualize a soul, and that soul shall walk out into the 
presence of God unprepared fi3r the judgment. 
Now the question comes up. What shall I say 
when God riseth up in judgment? What shall I 
say ? Now let us run over this question practically 
for a minute or two, and may God impress upon 
your consciences this question and these answers : 
"What will I do? What will I do?" Well, one 
man may answer : " I tell you what I will do. I 
shall fly away from the presence of God; I won't 
come up to be judged." 

Brother, listen ! If you take the wings of the 
morning and fly into the uttermost parts of the 
earth, God is there. If you make your bed in hell, 



476 Sermons and Sayings. 

lo ! God is there ; and no wonder the man of God 
in ancient times said : " Whither shall I go from 
thy presence? Whither shall I fly from thy 
Spirit?" 

There is but one way of getting out of the way 
of God, and that is to run up to God. I can not 
get out of the way of justice. What will I do? I 
am unprepared, and I can not fly justice and get 
away. Well, what will I do? Will I defy the 
authority of God and say, " I wonH be tried by this 
court?" Here is the court and here I am a pris- 
oner. Men have sometimes defied the authority of 
courts on earth, and said : " I won't be tried by 
this court." But shall I do that up yonder? poor, 
puny, defenseless worm that I am; shall I defy the 
great judge of all the earth, who in his omnipotent 
power laid the flaming mass upon the anvil of his 
eternal purpose and pounded it with his powerful 
arm, and every spark that flew from it made 
a world? Shall I resist such an omnipotent God as 
that? Why, I can not do that. I can not get out 
of the way of God. I can not defy him to his face. 

What shall I do? Shall I plead ''not guilty," 
with every angel of heaven and the record of earth 
against me? What will I do? I can not get 
away. I can not defy God's authority; I can not 
plead "not guilty." What will I do? 

Brother, that is the question which some of these 
days will wake you up. Mark what I tell you. 
Mothers, hear me a moment. In my town I saw 
a mother sit for a solid week in court while her boy 
was on trial for murder. He was a schoolmate of 



The Judgment. 477 

mine, and they tried him for murder, with his 
mother sitting pale and anxious a whole week in 
that Court House. She heard every witness testify, 
and listened to every word, and at times her lips 
would quiver, and at times tears ran down her 
cheeks, and at other times you could almost see her 
heart literally leap into her mouth. And when the 
trial was over and the jury had gone out to con- 
sider the case, and the court summoned the jury 
after they had found a verdict, that mother took 
her seat. And the foreman of the jury walked up 
with the bill of indictment in his hands and handed 
it to the clerk. The clerk took the verdict out of 
his hand and read: "We the jury find the defend- 
ant ." And it looked as if the mother would 

die before the remainder of the verdict could be 
read ; and there, the next word, what will it be ? O, 
that mother's heart is bleeding! What will that 

verdict be? "We the jury find the defendant ." 

What? what? what? what? All a mother's life 
and a mother's heart's blood depends upon what 
the next word shall be! When it was read: 

" Not guilty," this mother jumped up and clapped 

her hands, and said : " My son shall live." 

Mother, these children you are neglecting shall 
stand before that great tribunal up yonder. You 
are not interested now. You do not care now. 
O, mark the expression ! The time will come 
when the interest of your children will wake you 
up. You will be wide awake some time. Father, 
you fathers that won't pray and talk with your 
children, mark you, you may not care to-night, but 



478 Seemons and Sayings. 

you are going to care about these children, and God 
help you to say to-night : " Whatever else I ^11 do, 
I '11 train my children to meet God in peace.'' 
What shall I do when wife and children and myself 
shall stand before God? What will I do? What 
will I do ? O, brother, in that hour your mind 
will work rapidly, and all the thought of the uni- 
verse will be bent upon the question : " What will 
I do ? What will I do ?" 

Now I want to say this to you : You can not do 
any thing. This is the world for doing, down here, 
and that is the world up there for receiving judg- 
ment for what you have done. Do you get the 
idea? You can not do any thing there, but you 
can do something here. 

' What will I say ? Suppose some of you were 
summoned to judgment to-night, at twelve o'clock, 
and went up before God unprepared, what would 
you say? Will you say that you never heard a 
sermon in your life ? Will you say you heard a 
thousand, but never understood them ? Will you 
say that you think that you are as good as half the 
people in the Church? Will you say that you 
never saw any necessity of giving your heart to God 
and becoming religious? Will you say that the 
reason you did not try to do right was because 
about half the people in the Church were hypo- 
crites? What will you say? 

I once approached a man — he was a sensible 
man — and I said to him : '' Hear me ! I want you 
to join the' Church to-night, and give your heart to 
God." He said : " I can not do it." I then said : 



The Judgment. 479 

'^ I '11 tell you what I '11 do. If you'll go home to- 
night and sit down and write out a reason why 
you won't, that you think will stand the final judg- 
ment, then I will never mention it to you again." 
The next day I met that man, and he said : " Jones, 
what you said to me impressed me very deeply. 
Talk about writing out a reason that will do up 
yonder ! It can 't be done." And friends, you 
may have a thousand reasons here, but if not one of 
them will stand the test, you had better not risk 
your soul on them. I tell you, every man of you, 
to-night, if you have no reason that you think will 
answer at the judgment bar, you had better sur- 
render to-night, for your little talk that you make 
down here is not going to be worth a cent there. 
I do not expect that any man will say up yonder 
that he does not believe there is a God, or that he 
does not believe there is any thing in religion, or 
that he had n't heard a Gospel sermon to suit him, 
or that there was no Church to suit him, I won- 
der what people will say who go to the judg- 
ment unprepared. What will they say ? O, wonder 
of wonders ! What will they say ? I have thrown 
away all my time, and I have thrown away all my 
privilege, and I stand before God condemned to- 
night ! What will I say? What will I say ? 

Now, I might go on at length here, and call up 
the reasons that you may give ; but, brethren, if 
you ask me what I am going to do at the final day, 
I am going to say to the Judge of all the earth : 
"I have nothing to do but stand and trnst in the 
blessed Savior, just as I stood and trusted in yonder 



480 Sermons and Sayings. 

world with him;'' and, if you will ask me what I 
am going to say, I will tell you it will be about this : 

" Jesus, lover of my soul, 

Let me to thy bosom fly ; 
While the nearer waters roll, 

While the tempest still is high I 
Other refuge have I none ; 

Hangs my helpless soul on thee ; 
Leave, leave me not alone, 

Still support and comfort me ! " 

O, blessed Christ, help us to do to-night just 
what we will wish we had all done when we stand 
at thy judgment seat ! Help us to say to-night 
just what we can say up yonder, and God will help 
us and bless us because we do say it. 

Fathers, listen ! Do not go another step wrong. 
Mothers, come to God to-night! Sons and daugh- 
ters, let us live for the final judgment day, when 
God shall call us into account for our lives and 
actions in this world below, and then we will be 
prepared. 

If I can get by that day safely I am safe for- 
ever; but, O God, help me to live in reference to 
that day, in every word of my mouth, by every act 
of my life, by every thing that I do ! God help 
me to live in reference to that final day when I 
shall stand before him. As I stand before this 
great multitude, you and I will have to stand up 
yonder, and I trust that no man that ever heard 
me preach the Gospel will ever hear God say to 
me : " Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." 

I am going to do my best to live up to what I 
preach, and shun the evils I denounce. I intend to 



The Judgment. 481 

try to live a pure and upright life, and trust in Jesus 
Christ, and I know that, if religion is a sham and 
the Bible a fable, I have the best that this world 
can give. Call me a fool for believing it, but, 
thank God, I am a happy fool — I am a happy fool ! 
And if it turns out to be true, my friends, you will 
be miserable philosophers in eternity forever. God 
help us to decide to-night that religion is the best 
thing on earth, and that heaven itself can give us 
nothing better than religion. And, if this is true, 
let us have it in time, and have it in eternity, and 
have it forever. 

God bless you all and save you all ! I wish I 
had strength to talk to you longer, and you were 
comfortable, so you could hear it. I might say 
many things on this text, but I want to say this, 
and let it be my parting words: As a poor sinner 
fourteen years ago saved by the cross, it was the 
language of my heart then, and when I would get to 
heaven the language of my heart shall still be: 
" Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive all 
honor, and riches, and power, and dominion, forever 
and ever.'' 

God bless you all, and God keep you all, and 
God save you all. 



SAYINGS. 



The thing that keeps me from buying God and 
doing his works is the price that a man puts on his 
soul. That is the thing he is selling it for. What- 
ever keeps us from being baptized with the Holy 

41 



482 Sermons and Sayings. 

Ghost, and with power to do his bidding — I do n't 
care what that is — that is the price we have not 
only put upon our own soul, but upon every soul 
that comes under the radius of our influence. 

A Revival Wanted. — We want in this town 
a revival of unity. We want all of your denomina- 
tions to step into line together. And I tell you, my 
brethren, we want a revival of earnestness. We 
want a revival of mercy. We want a revival of 
charitableness, and we want a revival of that 
brotherhood that God blesses among men. O, for a 
revival that shall be as broad as the universe, as high 
as the shoulders of God, and as deep as human de- 
pravity. And when we get that opened upon this 
city we are going to have a salvation stream that 
shall flow like a river, and shall cleanse this city. 
Let us have this kind of a revival, and lay aside 
all small questions of denominational pride. Let 
us have a revival like that, and the revival will not 
pause here in Chicago, but it will spread from our 
own city. It will go across this river like the great 
fire which went along in its course as if it did not 
know that there was any river at all in this town. 
Let this revival be like that fire. Let it be such 
that it will pass over rivers as if there were no 
rivers, and blend all the divisions of Chicago into 
one Chicago, and God Almighty shall reign in this 
town. 




SANl W. S VI ALL 



DELIVERANCE FROM BONDAGE, 



A Temperance Sermon 

BY 



I HOPE you will give me your prayerful atten- 
tion to-night. "What I shall say shall be based 
on the sixteenth verse of the third chapter of Acts : 

" And his name, through faith in his name, hath 
made this man strong, whom ye see and know ; yea, 
the faith which is by him hath given him this per- 
fect soundness in the presence of you all.'' 

On one occasion there came into the market- 
place of a far Eastern city an aged, decrepit, and 
travel-stained man, who was a stranger to them all. 
He wandered through the vast bazaar without seem- 
ing to regard or take notice of the vast stores of 
merchandise, wealth, and accumulated wondrous 
handicraft of the people. Aimlessly he threaded 
his way about in that multitude until he attracted 
the attention of the people. Suddenly he stopped 
before one of the booths, where hung gilded cages, 
in which had been imprisoned birds of precious 
plumage and sweetest song. They were fluttering 
their little wings against the bars of their prison, 
and he listened intently that he might haply catch 
some note of their song ; but they, thus imprisoned, 
refused to give forth any of the melody of their 

483 



484 Sermons and Sayings. 

throats, but struggled and struggled impatiently 
and ineffectually against their imprisonment. 

Suddenly the old man put his hands in the folds 
of his garment, and drew therefrom coin of a 
strange realm. He asked the price of a cage. He 
bought it, and, opening the door, he turned the 
feathered songster loose, and it fluttered its wings, 
so long untried, and for a little while balanced its 
slight body in mid-air, until nature restored its 
powers of equilibrium, and then it mounted up, and 
up, and up, and with a glad song of joy circled 
above the heads of the multitude, until it caught 
sight of the distant cloud-capped mountain, where 
its home had been, and then, with its precious mel- 
ody flowing from its soul, it winged its way into the 
far and ethereal distance, and was lost to sight. 
Thus one by one he bought these little birds, and 
thus one by one he loosed them, and they repeated 
the glad notes of surprise, and took the same course 
back to their native mountain fastnesses. He seemed 
to take a greater pleasure and a sweeter joy as each 
little prisoner regained its liberty, and the tears 
streamed down his travel-stained and dust-covered 
face. 

Those who stood by said to him, " Why dost 
thou do these strange things?'' He said to them 
in reply, with a look of charity and joy indescrib- 
able on his face, ^^ I was once a prisoner myself, 
and I know something of the sweets of liberty.'' 

I, brethren, was once a prisoner myself, and now 
I have tasted something of the sweets of liberty in 
Christ, and with the precious coinage of his mercies 



Deliverance from Bondage. 485 

and his promises I would stand before this multi- 
tude to-night and purchase from the willing hearts 
of men the liberty of their souls from a bondage 
more despicable and deadly, and more repressive 
of the natural melody of men's souls, than were 
these gilded cages to the birds of this far Eastern 
mart. 

I have been under the bondage of sin, a bond- 
age that was galling every moment almost ; a bond- 
age from which there was eliminated every element 
of joy, and from which there seemed to be at times 
no avenue of escape. 

If you will pardon me, I will refer to myself. 
I will tell you something of my experience, because 
I would have my young compatriots know it, and 
know it to the good of their souls. I would have 
my fellow-men who are in middle life, with fami- 
lies, hear it. I would have these veteran fathers of 
this community hear it. 

I was well born. I was given by kindly par- 
ents all the true and the religious culture that a 
boy could have in a loving home. I was instructed in 
right speaking ; I was encouraged in right doing ; I 
was inspirited at times to consider myself a child of 
God, and to recognize in my youth my responsibil- 
ity to him. 

And when I had left my mother's side, and had 
left my father's counsel, and left the old hearth tree 
and the family altar, and gone out into the avenues 
of the world, seeking, first, an education, and after- 
ward position and piosperity, I fell into evil ways. 
With the strong and lusty passions of youth, with 



486 Sermons and Sayings. 

those whom I mingled I found there were courses 
and wayS; there were allurements and temptations, 
that were strange to me ; and I stood reliant only 
upon myself, forgetting the prayers and teachings 
of mother and father, and I was eager for a place, 
eager for the pleasures of this world, eager for the 
happiness and the enjoyments that I saw about me. 
And thus I easily fell in allurements, thus easily 
fell from virtuous thoughts and virtuous acts, and 
from the virtuous course of my life. 

The great bane, as I look back over my life^ and 
conjure up the recollections of my past — the great 
bane of all my sinfulness, the great moving cause 
of all the moral iniquities I committed — was nothing 
more nor less than this great gorgon-headed evil 
that is devouring so many of the people of this land, 
and sowing broadcast sin and sorrow in this chosen 
nation of ours — the sin of intemperance. 

I thought that it would be manly to do as nearly 
every man I saw about me did. I thought there 
would be some addition to my pleasure and expe- 
rience by going with them into their drinking places 
and indulging w^ith them. I felt all the time that 
I had strength of will enough, that I had force of 
character enough, to protect me from the excesses 
that I could see other men had fallen into. I believed 
that when I reached a dangerous point, if I ever 
did, I could put on the brakes of my nature and stop. 

I went away to college, and there again fell into 
evil courses. I struggled at times with the innate 
manhood that was in me, and attempted to throw 
off the growing appetite for these things. When I 



Deliverance from Bondage. 487 

came away, after I had graduated, and began to 
enter among men and their pursuits, and endeav- 
ored to acquire a profession, I thought still that I 
must mingle with my fellow-men ; have some par- 
ticipations in their customs and in their habits ; that 
I must bring myself into some sort of agreement 
and harmony with their ideas of social enjoyments, 
and I yielded again and again to the temptations 
thus presented, and again and again I fell from my 
rectitude, and away from ideas that lingered with 
me of what was right and proper. And thus, day 
after day, these passions grew stronger and stronger 
within me. 

I could feel and see that I was falling, falling 
falling all the time. I saw that there would not be 
left in me strength enough to save me, and I was 
unconscious at times of the fearful length to which 
I had fallen ; but I would not look at the picture I 
knew I was presenting to others. I went on and on. 
I went until I brought tears from the eyes of my 
precious mother, until I brought fearful lines to her 
face, until I brought gray streaks into her beautiful 
hair, until I had brought the lines of care about her 
loving eyes ; and until I knew I was dragging, drop 
by drop the life-blood from her devoted heart. I 
knew that my strong and manly father was suffering 
on my account tortures that he would not, in his 
courage, let the world know were gnawing at his 
heart and at his soul. 

I knew how it went out to me ; how it followed 
me abroad in other lands, and I knew that the fail- 
ing of his step, and the silvering of his. hair, and 



488 Sermoxs and Sayings. 

the deepening of the lines of grief about his mouth, 
that had so often spoken golden words of counsel, 
were due to the course and ways into which I had 
fallen, and to the apparent hopelessness of my ever 
coming out of them, and being reformed and being 
renewed in mind and in body. 

O, I shall never feel satisfied short of the ability 
in heaven to make obeisance at their feet and crave 
their pardon, which I know has long since been 
granted me, and which I shall ever see beam on 
their angelic faces until I am in my grave. 

I married a lovable woman. I married one who 
was proud of disposition; one who had high and 
noble traits of character; one who had quick and 
responsive sensibilities ; one to whom the very taint 
of any thing that was disreputable was like a knife- 
stab to her heart; but I disregarded the love and 
devotion of that precious wife. I went on and on, 
unheeding her counsel, disregarding her prayers, 
and from day to day getting grosser and grosser in 
my appetites, and getting more brutal in my insen- 
sibility to her pleadings and her prayers. And 
when children came to bless my home, even the 
sight of them in their little cradles, unconscious in 
the first moments of their life, and v^'ith the smiles 
of God drawing responsive smiles from them, I 
found it impossible for me to know that I was doing 
that which would sooner or later bring shame and 
sorrow and degradation upon those innocent babes; 
and as they grew from year to year their voices 
came, and they prattled about me ; it was only at 
distant intervals that I began to regard the future 



Dehveeance from Bondage. 489 

that was stretching far off in the distance before 
them, and which I must make either one of peace 
and pleasure, or one of despair and wretchedness. 

And year after year I went on and on in this 
course of sin and wickedness, and the light of my 
home went out. The love of my wife gave way, 
but the process of murder of affection could not last 
forever; and I saw at last, it seemed to me, that she 
had returned it to the sepulcher in which she had 
laid it away in its tear-bedewed cerements forever. 
I could see that the love and affection of my chil- 
dren were turning from me daily, seemingly by in- 
tuition. They saw I was not he who was appointed 
to be their father in the manifestations of father- 
hood that I made to them. I could know, and 
know with a treble emphasis, that drove unutter- 
able horrors into my soul, but it seemed only to 
drive me further and further into despair, that they 
would, at my coming, flee from my presence far 
away into the darkest and remotest parts of the 
house, for fear of the consequences of meeting their 
father. 

I had friends, friends in position, friends high in 
authority, friends who were true and steadfast to 
me ; but they, too, were unable to paint to me any 
picture that would allure me from the one I was 
painting with my own hand in the horrible colors 
of hell itself. They would point me to a goal that 
my bleared and confused vision would not see. 
They would endeavor to lift me up on plains of 
hope and sensibilities of ambition that I had ceased 
to be sensible of, as being worthy of achievement. 



490 Seemons and Sayings. 

They would endeavor to control my appetite, and 
find it as useless as to bind with a cotton-woven 
string the raging lion of the arid and tempest-swept 
desert. 

I had at times my lucid intervals, when there 
would come memories of mother^s prayer, of father's 
counsel, of wife's tears, and of children's mute and 
helpless look; and I would say to myself, "I will 
summon to my aid all the powers of my soul and 
manhood, and I will put under foot this monster 
of hideous mien that is dragging me down into 
degradation, into social ruin, and taking a fast hold 
upon my soul, and which sooner or later will drag 
it a trophy into hell. I would summon all my 
powers, only to find that I was weaker than a 
babe in the arms of so strong a passion as I had 
awakened. 

I would go to physicians, and ask them in the 
name of my family and future to do something 
for me, if indeed there had been found medicines 
on earth to minister to a mind diseased and an appe- 
tite debauched, and they would exhaust their knowl- 
edge and their skill, and hundreds and thousands 
of dollars did I spend in the endeavor to reinforce 
will, manhood, and my own powers of repression, 
but all in vain. 

There were antidotes that were published abroad 
in the world, and with the use of which cures are 
guaranteed, but all, all in vain. I spent hundreds 
and thousands of dollars, and hours and days of 
time, and I purchased advertised efficient and war- 
ranted cures for drunkenness, and I was as faithful 



Deliveeance feom Bondage. 491 

in the application of them as ever human being 
was ; but it was all in vain ! in vain ! ! in vain ! ! ! 

There was no medicament in them to cure my 
aroused passion and appetite. 

I went so far that my wife, under the laws then 
existing in Georgia, had written by the j udge of the 
court in which I was the official short-hand re- 
porter, a legal notice, couched in the language of 
the law, and had this notice served upon every 
dealer in liquors in the city of Atlanta, warning 
them, under penalty of the law, not to let me have 
their damniug fluid over their counters; and yet, 
outlaws as they were, disregarding my interest, 
disregarding my wife^s pleadings and the tears of 
my children, and disregarding the very law of the 
land, they still continued to supply me with the 
horrible draught for which my inmost nature seemed 
craving with insatiety. 

I even employed attendants and detectives, who 
followed me as I went about on my business in the 
streets of my city, and they followed me with the 
purpose, and were employed for the purpose, of 
keeping these men who would not keep the law 
themselves from furnishing me with whisky; and 
yet I, in conjunction with them, was able to hood- 
wink and defy detectives and law. 

Further and further, deeper and deeper, I was 
sinking ; I was getting hopeless for business ; hope- 
less for all social standing; hopeless for all the 
temporal interests of this world ; hopeless for eter- 
nity; and, in the very madness of my disordered 
brain, and in my very soul, there seemed at times 



492 Sermons and Sayings. 

no avenue of escape at all from this self-imposed 
bondage, except through insanity on the one hand, 
and through suicide on the other. 

I saw that my wife and children had given up 
all hope ; they did not know, from day to day, how 
I would come home to them. They had seen me 
brought there, day after day, time after time, in- 
sensible and unable to recognize them, from the in- 
fluence of this deadly and poisonous drug. They 
had seen me when I was brought in and laid on 
my bed covered with blood, and it seemed as 
though my days were indeed numbered, and that I 
would soon fall in the midst of my iniquity. They 
had seen me when I was brought home with the 
wounds of the knife and pistol on my body, and 
they had heard the rumors from the streets and 
dives of the dangers with which I had been con- 
stantly surrounded of late. To them it seemed as 
though there was no avenue, no loophole, of escape for 
me from a terrible death. There was not the sign 
of hope or spirit beaming out from their beautiful 
faces. They knew not, from day to day, whether I 
would live to greet them another day. They knew 
not whether, if my life was prolonged, they would 
be able to procure the very necessities of life from 
day to day. 

They knew not at what hour the very shelter 
that shielded them from the storm and from the 
heat would be removed from over their head, and 
they removed from under its shelter. There were 
visions of uncertainty, of the sheriff to dispossess, 
of the heartless landlord to distrain for rent, of the 



Deliverance from Bondage. 493 

debtor to come and take all. There was no future 
ahead of them, except a future of impenetrable 
gloom, through which seemed to come nothing but 
warnings of deeper woe and agonies yet to come. 
O, Lord, how good thou Avast to me! thou hast 
given me relief from that bondage at my seeking. 

At last there came a time when I seemed to 
have reached the limit. Something strange im- 
pelled me to take my little children, as a loving act, 
an act, it seemed to me, of reparation for neglects 
of weeks preceding, and go upon the train to Car- 
tersville, where Brother Jones was preaching to 
immense audiences, and from which the report had 
come that there were many and many hundreds, 
and even thousands, who were coming back into 
harmony with God. And as I sat upon the plat- 
form, endeavoring to take in stenography the words 
'as they fell from his lips, it seemed to me that God 
had inspired him to preach upon one certain line. 
He preached it with that faith which is his alone ; 
he preached it with that fidelity which is his dis- 
tinguishing characteristic ; he preached with the 
earnestness and with the conviction that broke 
down the casements of my heart and went home to 
it. When he had finished those words of Conscience ! 
Conscience! Conscience! and of Record ! Eecord ! 
Record ! of God, the infinite, the all-seeing and 
the ever-judging God, came home to me. 

I went away from there troubled in mind and 
soul. I went home, and back into the devious 
ways, back into the bar-room, back into the open 
highways, back to the maddening pool, in order to 



494 Seemons and Sayings. 

get away from the torments I was suffering from 
an awakened conscience. But they would not 
leave me. I could find no solace where I had often 
found insensibility. I could find no relief in pota- 
tions where I had often found, indifference and 
capability to take on a cool exterior. There was 
nothing there to give me surcease from the sorrow 
in my bosom ; and I went on and on until the sec- 
ond day, on Tuesday, at noon, I went into my 
library-room, fell upon my knees, buried my face 
in my hands, and I pleaded with Christ that he 
would let me cling to his cross, lay down all my 
burdens and sins there, and be rescued and saved 
by his compassion ; that I might be washed in his 
blood, and that my sins, though they were scarlet, 
might be white as snow. 

I wrestled for four long hours, in as much agony 
as I ever suffered. At the end of that time, when 
I had reached a conclusion, when I had come to 
understand that there was nothing of earth that 
could avail me, least of all with Christ, then I gave 
myself entirely to him, made an unconditional sur- 
render, and that moment he seized my soul. He 
dipped it in the stream which was white and pure^ 
and the light of heaven shone in upon me. 

In my new-found joy, I rushed into the presence 
ot wife and children. I proclaimed the glad tidings 
to their astonished ears, and they could hardly be- 
lieve it, though they saw that some great revolution 
had taken place. They knew not whether it was 
a surrender to Christ, or whether it had been a 
surrender to madness. 



Deliverance from Bondage. 495 

But when I went out that evening, I had three 
thousand circulars printed and distributed all over 
Atlanta, telling the people I had found my Savior ; 
I had made peace with God, and that I would live a 
life of righteousness ever after, and desired to make 
a proclamation for once and irrevocable. They 
gathered at seven o'clock upon the public streets 
that night, and there before them I proclaimed the 
fact, and, blessed be God, I have been proclaiming 
it ever since with increased joy, and with the cer- 
tainty that my salvation is complete. 

Eeturning home, I could see that Jesus had 
knocke^l at the tomb of my wife's life, as it did at 
that of Lazarus, and had called it forth in all its 
pristine strength and beauty, and its bloom and 
blossom has been my pathway ever since. I could 
see that my children had found tongue to sing the 
joy and praise, and their hearts had been set attuned, 
as they never had been before, to the melody of 
childhood, singing to the ears of fatherhood. I 
could see that there was gladness, wherever I went, 
upon the faces of friends and acquaintances ; and, 
when the news had gone abroad in the land, they 
who had known me abroad sent me their glad con- 
gratulations and their encouragement. 

Blessed be God that, from the day he reached 
down and lifted me up from the horrible pit and the 
miry clay, and established my feet upon the rock 
of Christ that is higher than we, I have been going 
on from joy to joy, a bird of liberty, singing the 
praises of my Redeemer. 

And so, having been thus saved and thus healed, 



496 Sermons and Sayings. 

I would call you who are in that terrible bondage 
to seek relief of the same great Physician, and 
to draw your medicine from the same infallible 
spring. 

What are we doing with ourselves? O, how, 
when we look abroad in this land, we can see how 
intemperance is becoming the great national vice, 
and how it is becoming the fell destroyer of so many 
thousands and thousands of our loved ones. What 
are we doing with these bodies of ours? "What, 
know ye not that your body is the temple of the 
Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have 
of God, and ye are not your own?^^ Fellow- 
men, fellow-men, let me bring you to the contem- 
plation of the fact that these bodies of ours are the 
temples of the Holy Ghost, and that they were 
fashioned after the architecture of his great brains, 
by the great Being w^ho is the architect of the 
universe. 

These bodies he made of the dust of the earth, 
and these bones of his rock ; he made us with veins 
and with arteries, and filled them with the blood 
from the seas of his providence ; he gave us breath, 
which, like the wind, cometh and goeth and scat- 
tereth; which cometh we know not whence, goeth 
we know not where ; he gave us sight for all the 
beauties and grandeurs of the world, and inflamed 
it with fire from the center of his storehouse of fire; 
he gave us thoughts, like the clouds, for, like them, 
they move, and as they play in the sunlight of right- 
eousness, are transformed into beauty, whether it be 
the beauty of the dawn, presaging what is to come, 



Deliverance from Bondage. 497 

or the beauty of the sunset, presaging the glorious 
death toward which we tend. 

And we can make these minds of ours reflect 
the light of heaven, or they can have the light of 
heaven withdrawn, and be dark and dismal and 
foreboding as the storm-clouds, from which the 
mutterings of heaven come and roll the thunders of 
agony that spread destruction and death upon us. 
And in these temples he has placed the Holy Ghost 
in spirit for us, and we are its custodians, the priests 
of these temples; and when we degrade and defile 
them, we are degrading and defiling the architec- 
ture of God and his chosen resting-place in us. 

O, what a touching instance it was when the 
favorite son of Tertullian died ! His companions 
were bearing his corpse to the cemetery upon their 
shoulders, and as they went along, occupied with 
their thoughts of sorrow and grief, they stumbled 
by the way, when the grief-stricken father, noticing 
it, called out to them : " Young men, beware how 
you walk ; you bear upon your shoulders the temple 
of the Holy Ghost." 

So with us. We go about bearing with us the 
temple of the Holy Ghost, and we are recreant to 
our own creation, recreant to our own destiny, re- 
creant to the great God who fashioned us, recreant 
to the great God who made us his temples, when 
we defile these bodies of ours, and ruin them with 
the licenses of our baser natures and our depraved 
appetites. 

One time Diogenes saw a young man going to 

a place of revelrv, where drinking was the custom, 

42 



498 Sermons and Sayings. 

and from which men who went in sober and rational 
beings emerged besotted, and not knowing their 
way. He seized upon the young man, carried him 
to his friends, and informed them that he had res- 
cued their precious boy from a great and awful 
danger. So it would be well if we had friends who 
would thus rescue us. But there are times when 
friends, as I told you, can have no influence, and no 
Diogenes, however wise, however honest, however 
mindful of his neighbor, could restrain us from 
going into these places. 

But how many Diogeneses it would take to seize 
upon those that night after night and day after day 
are going into these places of danger and ultimate 
death in the city of Cincinnati ! O, let us seek to 
save ourselves through the only influence, the only 
medicament, and the only Physician that this uni- 
verse affords us! 

What is intemperance doing? It is not neces- 
sary to marshal here before you the figures ; you can 
see it all about you. 

Young man, you know that you started in your 
intemperate habits just as I did. You know what 
influences have led you ; you know what ambitions 
you thought you could cultivate by listening to 
them; you know how you have run out and gone 
into these places with like ideas of strength and 
ability to control yourselves just as I had. And 
now you are buoyant in the consciousness that you 
think that at any time you can slap on the brakes 
of your nature, and save yourselves from degrada- 
tion that you see upon the planes just below us. 



Deliverance from Bondage. 499 

Beware, beware of that fatal cup. There are 
fathers, middle-aged ; they know what intemperance 
will do. They are listening to me to-night, and 
they started on that road just as I started ; but if 
they have not reached the same length to which I 
went, they are on the high road to it. They can 
already know that they are not received where once 
they were welcome guests ; they know that they are 
passed every day on the streets of Cincinnati by 
men who formerly regarded them with esteem and 
claimed them as friends. They know that avenues 
were once open to them of usefulness, and which 
are now closed upon them forever on account of 
their habits, their companionship, and their places 
of resort. They know that the happiness of their 
families, once complete, is now gone, apparently 
forever. They know that the blanched cheek of 
that wife, that the constant redness of eye when 
they enter home, that the fleeing children, are all evi- 
dences of the steady growth of the evil; and they 
have grown just in proportion as they have gone 
deeper and deeper into this besotted condition. 

There are old men here to-night who have led a 
long life, it seemed, of moderation, and who thought 
that they were exemplifying the ability of a man to 
drink and drink and drink, and yet preserve his 
manhood and his honest position ; but they can see 
that their excesses are not only sapping the foundations 
of their health ; they can feel that they are untimely 
gray ; they can feel that they have diseases in them 
that they would not have had but for their intem- 
perance; and they can see before them no life that 



500 Sermons and Sayikgs. 

is leading them on and brightening their way as 
they go. But they are seeing, upon the other hand — 
and if they are honest with themselves, they will 
confess it to their souls — that they are losing the 
powers, and that sooner or later they, too, must 
sink into the lowest depths of degradation, and be 
untimely cut off, and go to hell to everlasting death. 

Families and individuals — cities — prostrated. 
There is nothing that is so glaring about them as 
intemperance, which sweeps over them like the 
storm over a forest, day after day and night after 
night. Thank God that my city of Atlanta has 
redeemed herself under the white banner of temper- 
ance, with the cross of Christ on it ! Thank God, 
she will shine as a city set upon a hill, giving a 
light to this nation ! Ohio to-day is giving full 
liberty to the whisky dealers to debauch and damn 
the most precious sons of your loins and your house- 
hold. 

God can not bless a people who are thus recre- 
ant to themselves and thus recreant to their duties, 
both to humanity and to God. Thank God that 
old Georgia is rapidly redeeming herself, and that 
after a while she will still be lying in the very 
apron of this nation, a redeemed State from the tyr- 
any of alcohol, and that she will raise her banner 
and commend it in its purity to every State in this 
nation, as it blazons with the legend of Wisdom, 
Justice, and Moderation, under the broad and glit- 
tering arch of the Constitution. 

l^early twenty-five years ago misguided men in 
the South fired the first shot upon Fort Sumter that 



Deliverance from Bondage. 501 

awakened this entire nation, and led to reform, and 
led to liberties, and led to the release of slaves from 
bondage, led to what no man had contemplated as 
being capable of realization. It marshaled the most 
impregnable arms of this continent, and that shot 
reverberated all through civilization. I tell you 
that whatever were the disasters of war, it struck 
the shackles from six million slaves ; but to-day, in 
a holier and grander cause, by the approving smile 
of God, old Georgia has fired a gun upon the Sum- 
ters of sin and intemperance in this country that 
will arouse this whole nation ; and we will batter 
down these forts of intemperance, whether they are 
in Cincinnati, Chicago, or New York. 

The army of God in this nation is on the march. 
And you may listen here; and if you have not the 
courage and the Christian zeal, we will come and 
break down the barriers ; we will pound down the 
forts of the demon of alcohol, and we will release 
you from this terrible bondage. 

In the midst of influences like this, with these 
facts staring them in the face, statesmen of this 
country are too cowardly to seize upon this great 
question, and make it a question of public policy for 
the Christian people. Politicians go wandering 
about among the lower classes, and talk and rant 
about personal liberty and sumptuary laws, as though 
they had a right to give laws to these people, when 
these smiling scoundrels are only seeking popularity 
and applause from the foolish and depraved. 

Scientists are disputing and debating, when all 
history and all true science have demonstrated that 



502 Sermons and Sayings. 

no curse is greater upon a people than to have the 
saloons and the dissemination of these deadly com- 
pounds in the community. These whisky dealers 
are outlaws; they are against the law; they are 
anomalous creatures, and the anarchists of the nine- 
teenth century. If they would disobey and disre- 
gard the laws in my case, they will do it in yours, 
and they will do it in the case of every precious 
son you have got, of every living father you have 
got, of every devoted husband you have got in this 
country. 

Churches meet in conventions, meet in confer- 
ences, meet in assemblies, meet in synods, and pass 
resolutions on the subject of temperance, and yet the 
very ministers, it seems, in places, are unwilling to 
enforce the declarations and laws of their own 
Churches against their own members, notwithstand- 
ing that right here in Cincinnati ministers of the 
Gospel have been disrobed through its influences, 
and Churches have been debauched. 

And thus our very rulers, law-makers, public 
men, and public teachers are thus indifferent or 
cowardly in the face of an evil like that, while the 
red- winged and fiery-eyed Zamael of these distillers 
and brewers of the country is sweeping over this 
land and laying low in horrible death the first-born 
of American homes, as the angel did at the command 
of God in the land of Pharaoh centuries ago. And 
every man and every woman, especially in America, 
has a direct personal interest in seeing the banner 
of Christ triumph over the sign of the beer barrel 
and the whisky worm. 



Delivekance from Bondage. 503 

Is there any thing needed to arouse the humanity 
and th'e patriotism of you people to the iniquities 
that are being thus committed in your midst, and 
the sad havoc that is being made in your homes ? 
If I to-night were to call around me a staff of 
bailiffs and furnish them with subpoenas, I could 
send them into the streets, and into the back-yards, 
and into the slums and alleys and tenement districts 
of Cincinnati, and I could send to Walnut Hills, 
and to Mount Auburn, and Avondale, and Mount 
Adams, and other of your respectable and high- 
toned suburbs of Cincinnati, and from the palaces 
of your richest down to the humblest huts and dens 
of your poorest, and examine the widows and the 
orphans that whisky has made, and array them here 
in grand mass by the thousands, with their weeping 
eyes, with their dismal recollection, with their 
mourning, with their hearts crushed and bleeding, 
and they would say to you, "If you are men, in 
the name of God and humanity, rise in your might 
and drive this monster out before he destroys and 
ruins your homes too." 

If we but heed these witnesses, and are true to 
ourselves, to our children, to humanity, and to God, 
we can destroy this flaming monster, and soon be 
able to sing out to men and angels that our people 
are redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled from 
the fatal powers of the dragon. Then we will be 
blessed by our Father in heaven with a posterity 
given to paths of righteousness and lives of Chris- 
tian endeavor and achievement. 

Our sons shall grow up in strength and honor, 



604 Sermons and Sayings. 

and wear the Christian armor. Their feet will be 
shod with the preparation of the Gospel, their loins 
be girded about with truth, their bodies guarded by 
the breast-plate of faith, their shield be righteous- 
ness, their manly, sun-lit brows be crowned with 
the helmet of salvation, and their good right arms 
will wield the trenchant, victorious sword of the 
Spirit, which is the Word of God. 

Our daughters will grow up in beauty and come- 
liness of Christian graces. Their feet will be san- 
daled with truth and faith; their limbs be clothed 
with robes of purity, on which, in silver and gold 
and prismatic hues, will be embroidered the record 
of their good deeds ; their waists will be encircled with 
the golden girdle of strengthening prayer; their 
bosoms shielded by the bodice of innocence cover- 
ing the virtuous heart, on which burn vestal fires 
of love ; from their shoulders will drop the mantle 
of humility, and their hands will dispense the 
golden showers of charity upon the one side and of 
mercy upon the other ; their throats will be wrapped 
with the pearls of precious words ; their lips will 
give forth sweet songs of praise to God ; their eyes 
will ever turn in trust to the great white throne, 
whose radiance will glint in the folds of their 
tresses, and presage the crown of immortal life that 
shall press their brows in Paradise. 

And these two shall dwell in the splendors and 
happiness of the palace of purity, that rears its 
walls and dome around and over every true and 
consecrated Christian heart. They will go up to it 
over the broad white flag-stones of perfect desires; 



Deliverance from Bondage. 505 

they will climb up its great steps of geometrically 
and systematically fashioned purposes and ambi- 
tions; they will pass between the grand columns 
of strength and wisdom that stand before the Gate 
Beautiful, with its golden welcome, "All that is 
pure may enter in ;" and in the hall of consecration 
they will put on the insignia of their heaven-given 
prerogatives, and pass on into the rotunda of a 
righteous life, and up into the throne-seats of honor 
in the East. From that exalted place, they may 
contemplate with rapture the idealized tableaux of 
the virtues of their lives. Here the picture of 
Truth — a fair maiden drawing from her exhaustless 
well the waters of sincerity that are poured out for 
the ennobling and refreshing of all people, and over 
her the glittering legend: ^^ Magna est Veritas et 
prevalebit.^^ There is the tableau of Faith, clinging 
to the rock-rooted cross that towers heavenward, 
and around which the wild waves of worldliness, 
woe, and passion surge unavailing, their highest 
spray not touching even the hem of her garments. 
Yonder is seen the fair form of Virtue, her 
beautiful feet standing amid the treasures of the 
upturned cornucopia of fortune, her hands folded 
in peacefulness across her lovely bosom, and her 
golden hair blown into a halo about her head by 
the breezes that are born in the hills of happiness. 
Here again is figured the faultless goddess of 
Justice, standing upon the uppermost pole of the 
earth, holding the scales of God's earthly impartial- 
ity, and weighing out the dues of men in harmony 

with eternal truth. Over her the constellations 

43 



506 Seemons and Sayings. 

gather and glitter in the edict of Jehovah: ^^Fiat 
justitia^ mat ccelumT^ There again is the sweet 
face of Charity, swift-paced to carry succor and life 
to the hovel of the poor, the cots of the sick and 
cells of the wretched. And next comes the picture 
of gentle and tender-hearted Mercy, soothing the 
cares, relieving the burdens, reconciling the hearts, 
and ministering to the redemption of all the souls 
of God's children. And here is the grand portrait 
of the strong, manly apostle of Temperance, the 
embodiment of health, vigor, energy, and philan- 
thropy; a giant in all good works, and approved 
servant of heaven. 

Over in the West is the grand horologe of Time, 
counting out the moments of life in a monotone 
psean of patience and labor, while its great pendu- 
lum swings through an arc that reaches from the 
cradle to the tomb. 

In the center is the Christian's altar, on which 
praises and prayers turn to worshiping incense and 
pervade the place with heavenly odors. 

Up in the high center of the vast dome blazes 
the Sun of righteousness, that lightens forever the 
splendid scene. Looking into it, the eye of faith, 
strengthened like the young eaglet's, can discern 
the transfigured cross of Calvary, pointing the soul 
to its home and rest around the throne of God in 
heaven. 

Who are these that thus reign and rejoice? 
They are the Prince Christian and Princess Chris- 
tiana of the kingdom of God on earth. They are 
the heirs apparent to everlasting life and the im- 



Deliverance from Bondage. 507 

perishable possessions of the King of kings ! God 
direct us with his wisdom to so live and use our 
lives as to endow our children with these titles and 
these palaces of purity on earth — these inheritances 
of the meek, and pure, and temperate, and dutiful, 
in '* the city whose builder and maker is God." 



@HE Gnd. 



